Discover Top Posts Tagged with #grune

Panthro: ThunderCats Reborn AU

We're back babey! This time it's Panthro's turn, the scars and prosthetics are for backstory reasons as you may soon read. I always thought Thunderians being "bald" (presumably they've still got fur on their heads) wasn't rally my bag. I didn't wanna go with the way 2011 did it and wanted to reinforce the Afro-Brazilian and Afro-Carribean influences that partly inspired this redesign. The pants are Capoeira inspired and the top is loosely based on a sleeveless martial artist uniform top. I think the next time I draw him the fur and eye/mouth marking distinction will be a bit sharper but I'm otherwise pretty happy with how he turned out!

Panthro's Reborn Origin Story

Though Panthro was born during the Plundarrian occupation, his early childhood would be untouched by its horrors. Growing up on a small archipelago between the lands of the Jaguar & Leopard Clans. Born from a people gifted with shadow dappled fur otherwise a rarity to their ancestral clans. Panthro would spend much of his youth (when he wasn’t bringing wild animals home as “pets”) helping his parents’ in their repair shop.

His peaceful little island community was able to thrive thanks to sitting atop a rich deposit of Thundrillium, steadily and carefully extracted via bio-mining. Of course, when the Plundarrian war machine learned of this, the world Panthro had come to know would come to an end. As Ratar-O sent one of his favorite Generals, Pterror the Bat and his War Cauldron to conquer the islands.

It started with the raids, Pterror and his aerial units would distract the adults by snatching up cubs and dropping them into the ocean. Panthro being among the victims, with the scars to prove it from the times he fought back in midair. While the adults numbers thinned to retrieve their kin, Pterror’s ground and sea units would steal and destroy anything within claw’s reach. Again and again, stripping them of means of providing for, let alone protecting themselves. Poisoning their waters with more “efficient” means of extracting their precious livelihood.

(The rest of his origin and my art process photos are under the cut! Feel free to submit any questions you'd like!)

By the time Panthro had reached adulthood, without his parents’ knowledge he had formed a discreet resistance composed largely of adolescents like himself against their invaders. Sabotage, malicious compliance, and boldest of all jury-rigging and discreetly planting explosives at crucial mining operations. Eventually he and a handful of his cohorts were caught, taken far away from the islands to become forced labor at one of the occupation’s many military prisons.

It was customary by this point during the occupation for prisoners to be both declawed and de-fanged. Depriving their prisoners of their birthright means of defending themselves. The warden of this camp was a Reptilian called Slithe, who took special pleasure in performing, or at least witnessing the process himself. Thankfully, after a time of waning power and despair, the ThunderCats returned, or what was left of them after Grune’s betrayal and defeat. While the likes of Lord Claudus broke their chains, it was Panthro who lead his fellow freed prisoners to victory. Giving the Warden Slithe an ugly scar as he retreated from his fallen fiefdom in terror.

By the end of the occupation Panthro was seen as a hero both at home and abroad. Retiring from a life of violence and subterfuge to look after his parents and help repair the damage done to his village. Never idle or permissive of any obstacle, fashioned himself prosthetic clawed fingertips and fangs to replace what had been taken from him in prison. He would not leave the island’s shores until his parents’ passing, both unseasonably early thanks to the hardships of the occupation and the environmental hazards that were a disastrous side effect.

Panthro found himself a ship with no anchor, the islands that bore him were no longer the same, and neither was he. Feeling he’d return someday, he left his home to travel the world. Hungry for knowledge and anything that might tame the anger he still felt inside. He took to martial arts and disciplines, a personal quest to master them all in hope of a sense of control. Briefly finding a teacher in Lynx-O, whom he returned the favor to by investigating the visions of a student of his at the Hall of Mystics, one’s which promised Thundera’s doom.

When his investigations came up empty, he was quick to turn his sights elsewhere, unnerved by magic and all its chaos. He continued his endless search for closure and purpose, trying to leave the places he’d been better than he had found them over the next decade. In the Thunderian capital of Thazera he would meet a young man by the name of Tygra who would soften his attitudes towards magic. Proposing an invention that would mimic on a much smaller scale the old crafts which seamlessly fused mystic powers and technology seamlessly. Resulting in a bolo whip that could activate a mystic’s illusory powers of invisibility without the mental exertion.

This co-creation would become indispensable to the Lady Seka, wife of the Lord of the ThunderCats and head of the Lioness Council and her attempts to end Mutant skirmishes and the workings of the insurgent Fanged Cabal. Tygra & Panthro’s friendship would take on a second, more militant nature, especially after the death of Lady Seka at the Cabal's hands. Culminating in their final mission before Thundera’s fall acquiring the schematics of a deadly Plundarrian war machine for Jaga and Claudus.

When Cheetara emerged from self-exile to warn of Thundera’s doom, he, among a precious handful of others, were entrusted with the safety of Lord Claudus’s son Lion-O. Inaugurated as ThunderCats, Panthro had long already been one in spirit. He must reckon with unclosed chapters, an enemy he had thought dead, and a young cub who had home and peace stripped from him at a moment’s notice, not too unlike his own youth. Resolute in seeing will of the ThunderCats who came before him through. He will do his best to use his experiences to protect them all, and perhaps find if not a peace and purpose that he could not have found alone.

#grune

Trending Tags

Recently Viewed Tags

#grune