Before getting into their stories, let's look first at the art. I had a lot of fun with Mohatu's design. Like Hifadhi, I used his colors from The Brightest Star and the same basic design, but exaggerated/played down several features so that he'd look a lot less like a Mufasa recolor (especially important given that he isn't even related to Mufasa in this version). He's got a similar sort of strong build as Mufasa, but he's smaller and has a longer, narrower face with different features.
Ahadi ended up changing quite a bit from the last time I drew him. I made his colors a bit darker and more saturated, gave him light eyerims instead of dark ones, and changed up his manestyle a bit (I'll have to draw him from the front sometime). He also now has his scars on his back rather than his neck/chest. I'm super happy with how he turned out, his face and build finally look how I always wanted them to look (he's skinny like Scar, but not unhealthy, he has that narrow face and long nose, but it's thinner than scars with the bend occuring further up, and he has broader, neater cheeks, and a square chin instead of Scar's scruff long one). I also love how his new colors look together, especially with the lighter eyerims and super-pale eyes, and the darker more saturated fur looks great. I think he looks fantastic overall. He's on the smaller side, shorter than Scar, but not tiny by any means.
Masilahi was super fun to draw in full-body view for the first time in a while. Her head-and-neck scruff has evolved into a sort of half-mane almost, though it's not quite enough to consider her a maned lioness, it's mostly just a trait common among her family and the prides that lived nearby. Her colors got tweaked a bit from the last time I drew her, but not nearly as much as Ahadi's. As always, she's a massive super-buff girl. ^^
And now, onto the story! Warning in advance - it's pretty long.
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Mohatu was a wise and just king and much beloved in the Pride Lands. He was more open-minded than his traditionalist brother, and respected and listened to all of the creatures in his kingdom. He worked hard to tend to all of their needs and keep the circle of life in balance.
But the king had a secret that gnawed at his core. He had no desire for a mate -not a lioness, not a lion, not a creature of any species or gender, not anyone at all. He never had, and he knew in his heart that he never would. Taking a queen and fathering cubs to be his heirs was such an important duty of his, but the idea of it had only ever filled him with dread. He didn’t mind the idea of being a father, he’d always liked cubs and had gotten along with them well, but he shuddered to think of what he’d have to endure to have cubs of his own. He never told his parents, unable to bear the idea of disappointing them, or his brother, who would have scolded him for shrinking from his duty. The king was left to bury his fear in his heart and suffer his worries in silence.
But then, as though the great kings of the past themselves had intervened, the river glowing into his kingdom from the lands beyond delivered him a gift. A rogue cub, orphaned after a flood had claimed the lives of his parents, half-drowned and scrawny, barely able to draw breath. Mohatu hovered and fretted as the mjuzi tended to the cub, not relaxing until he was told that the boy would live. When the cub awoke, he was able to introduce himself as Ahadi and tell his rescuers of his parents’ fate. Mohatu immediately offered to let the cub live in his pride.
He had initially intended one of the pride to take in the boy, but as the weeks passed, he found himself growing closer to the cub. While the other cubs rough-housed, Ahadi was content to sit between the mighty paws of the king while Mohatu told him stories of the many creatures in his kingdom, of his own life, and of the great kings of the past. Love, a father’s love, had taken hold of his heart. He finally decided to do what he had always longed to, and what his heart now called him to do - announce his intention to never take a mate, and adopt Ahadi as his son and heir.
Ahadi was delighted at this turn of events. His parents had loved him, but life as rogues had been hard, and there had been much struggling and toil in the short years before they’d been taken from them. His hard life had left him quiet and introspective. He’d worried whether he’d ever be accepted by the louder, more boisterous cubs of the pride, or by the adults who seemed to find him odd for scarfing down his food quickly in case a predator came to take it, and for starting at any loud noise in case it heralded the approach of a dangerous animal. But Mohatu had never treated him like he was odd. He had always treated Ahadi with kindness, warmth, and respect. Ahadi had come to love the wise king as a father, and couldn’t be happier when Mohatu asked him to be his son. While he would never forget his parents and the love they had shown him, he was ready to move forward with his new life in the Pride Lands and with the father who loved him.
But even as Prince Ahadi grew surer and more confident, coming to befriend other cubs in the pride, one lion always watched him with an unfavorable eye. Prince Hifadhi, brother of the king, leader of the Lion Guard. At first. Ahadi was oblivious to the sour looks the older lion threw his way. But one traumatic day finally brought him face to face with Hifadhi’s disdain for him.
He and the other cubs were playing in a small gully when there were sudden snarls and the panicked shrieks and stomping hooves of a stampede. A group of hunting predators had ambushed a nearby antelope herd in a run-of-the mill hunt - but now the herd was coming straight at the cubs. Hifadhi and his guard were alerted by a young hornbill named Zuzu who had spotted the cubs in danger. The Guard came running to the rescue. The hunters too had heard the cubs and were frantically trying to chase the herd away from the young lions, but the antelopes were now mindless with panic and didn’t recognize the cries of frightened cubs among the growls of the hunters. While the rest of the guard pulled the other cubs away from danger, Hifadhi rushed in to grab the final cub. But when he saw that the cub was Ahadi, he hesitated. There was a moment where the terrified cub locked eyes with the older lion, and realized that Hifadhi did not want to help him.
Hifadhi’s hesitation lasted only a moment. Perhaps if he’d acted sooner, nothing would have changed, or perhaps it would have, but Ahadi would never know for sure. All he knew is that the panicked foreleg of an antelope knocked into him and shoved him roughly against a nearby rock. There was an explosion of pain in his back. Just before he blacked out from the pain, he heard Hifadhi’s roar scaring the antelope away from him, and he felt Hifadhi’s jaws close around him as he was carried away.
When he awoke, it was to Mohatu’s worried face hovering above his own. Hifadhi and the Guard had brought him back to Pride Rock, and the mjuzi had been called to tend to his wound. It seemed the rock had torn a great gash in his back. Nothing had been broken, thankfully, but Ahadi would be left with a permanent scar across his back, and would deal with pain and stiffness in his back for the rest of his life, limiting how long he could walk or stand. Over time, the mjuzi would figure out the right herb treatment to help lessen Ahadi’s pain, which Ahadi was immensely grateful for. But the scar and stiffness and limited mobility would remain. And perhaps what hurt more than any of that was the new knowledge that his adoptive uncle hated him and had let him be hurt.
Meanwhile, the lioness Masilahi had grown up in a part of Africa where smaller Pride units lived. There were no Kings or Queens ruling vast kingdoms with prey and predator alike as their subjects - instead, a Lord (or Lady) served as the protector of the pride’s territory, patrolling the borders, driving out other predators, and meeting any challengers in battle, in exchange for the pride hunting for them, giving them first dibs on food, and treating them with respect.
The rest of the pride were hunters, and the actual running of the pride was left up to the lead hunter or huntress, referred respectfully to as Mother or Father regardless of whether they’re actually someone’s parent or not. Often, the Lord/Lady and Mother/Father of the pride were the main breeding pair, with the rest of the hunters made up of their brothers and sisters, but it could vary. Cubs left their pride of birth at the start of adulthood to freshen up the gene pool - littermates often chose to join the same pride, but sometimes decided to go their separate ways. Young adults could join other prides as hunters, and were usually easily accepted that way, or could challenge the Lord of Lady of a pride in combat for the chance to take their place. Battles of this kind were fierce, but non-fatal unless an accident occurred, and followed strict rules of honor and tradition. Once either combatant yielded, the fight was over, and the loser was allowed to leave in peace, accompanied by any of the pride who chose to go with them.
Masilahi was the daughter of Lord Hodari and Mother Tamu, part of her family’s small pride. She lived a happy life with her little family. Her mother was a skilled huntress and stern but loving mother, who often called her Almasi, or her little gem. Her father always found time between patrols to goof around with his daughter and make her laugh. She knew she would have to leave one day, but she knew she would see her family at the borders sometimes, and she was determined to make them proud. She planned to become a huntress and study to one day become the lead huntress and Mother of her new pride - she was strong enough to become a Lady through combat, but preferred the close bonds between hunters to the more solitary life of a Lady.
But it was never to be. When Masilahi was a cub, a pair of rogue brothers came to challenge her father for his land and his pride. These males weren’t from any of the local prides - they came from a far-off land where kings ruled over vast kingdoms, and unknown to the pride, their ambition was to create such a kingdom in this land. One of the males met Hodari in combat, but the second male joined the fight partway through, which was against the rules, and sent Hodari fleeing for his life before the pride could even blink. Hodari left his home and family behind, wandering the vast lands of Africa over the years, until finally, as a very elderly lion with a chin fully white with age, he settled in a jungle oasis in the midst of a great jungle. There, he met a strange lone lion cub who called him Tanglemane and helped ease his loneliness in his final years. Unbeknownst to Hodari, the cub was his own great grandson, Simba, the grandson of his beloved Masilahi.
After Hodari’s unlawful defeat at the paws of the cheating males, Tamu gathered the pride’s cubs together. She told them that with such treacherous lions now in control of the pride, that their safety was no longer assured. She assigned a strong young hunter from the hunter as their protector, and ordered her to take the cubs far away, where they might find safety from the dangerous males. After a tearful goodbye, Masilahi departed with the hunter and the other cubs. But one of the males noticed the hunter trying to smuggle the cubs out of the territory and gave chase. During the confusion, Masilahi was separated from the others, and found herself all alone in a land she didn’t know.
Frightened and alone, Masilahi wandered for a time, surviving off of insects and scraps stolen from the kills of other predators. It was while she was scarfing down scraps from a kill behind the back of the hunters that she was finally caught by the original hunters of the carcass. But luckily for her the hunters, a wandering clan of hyenas, felt pity for the terrified little cub. They offered her shelter among their numbers. Masilahi gratefully accepted. In an effort to shield her identity, in case the male lions ever came looking for her, she told the hyenas her name was Uru - a gem, just as her mother had always called her.
Initially, the clan had only intended to let the cub stay with them long enough for them to find a rogue couple or a pride willing to take her in. But the longer she stayed with them, the more the clan came to care for her, and they soon considered her one of their own. Uru grew particularly close with a hyena with a daughter named Banagi who was close to her own age. The hyena took Uru under her wing, and she and Banagi soon considered each other sisters.
After some time of wandering and hunting where they could, Uru’s clan came across the Pride Lands. To their surprise, King Mohatu welcomed them into the kingdom with open arms. The hyena population in his kingdom had been dwindling in recent years due to some infertility issues, and he welcomed the chance to have more hyenas to balance out that section of the circle of life. The clan settled easily into life in a kingdom. They respected the laws of the king and of the circle of life, and only hunted as much as they needed.
Uru and Banagi were too young to hunt themselves, but an important part of learning to hunt was to watch how it was done, so they were brought along to hide from a safe distance and watch during a hunt one day. The clan ambushed a herd of antelope near a gully, only to realize too late that a group of lion cubs were playing in the gully. Uru and Banagi couldn’t help without getting trampled, but they were able to get the attention of a nearby hornbill who had already spotted the trouble, pointing her in the direction of where they’d last seen the Lion Guard passing by, in the hope that she’d be able to bring them in time to help. Uru was watching the rescue - she was the only one besides Ahadi to notice Hifadhi’s hesitation.
The clan apologized profusely to King Mohatu for the whole situation, as did the antelope once they’d calmed down, but the king could see that neither party was at fault, that it had all just been a terrible accident. What worried him more than any hyenas or antelopes was the cold manner of his brother when he’d brought the badly-injured cub home to Pride Rock, and Ahadi’s sudden change in attitude around Hifadhi, how he seemed almost scared of him now. While Ahadi didn’t tell him about Hifadhi’s hesitation, unsure if he was right about what he’d seen or whether he’d be believed, Mohatu could tell that something was very wrong. He resolved to keep a much closer eye on his brother going forward. But even with this extra effort, Hifadhi was able to keep training his son Jadi to be the next heir in secret, leading to the eventual coup later down the road.
The accident with the antelope did have one positive - it brought Uru, Ahadi, Banagi, and Zuzu into each others’ lives. Ahadi thanked the three girls for their parts in helping save him, and soon became very great friends with all three of them. A few years later, Nyonda joined their little group in secret, and the bonds of friendship between the five grew strong as a pride. But the strongest bond was between Uru and Ahadi. It was to her alone that Ahadi confided his fears of Hifadhi’s ill intentions towards him, as Uru had also witnessed his hesitation. It was to Ahadi alone that Uru shared the truth of her past. Even from the start, the two shared a trust and understanding that few could match.
Uru was bigger and stronger than any other cub in the pride, but she was also a thoughtful soul, even if she wasn’t as quiet and in her own head as Ahadi had been when he’d first arrived in the Pride Lands. She was perfectly happy sitting with Ahadi for hours, playing the games she and Ahadi came up with that could be done without moving too much and bothering Ahadi’s back - telling stories of make-believe to each other, counting all the stripes on a nearby grazing zebra, seeing who could build a higher stack of pebbles without it collapsing, and more. Sometimes, Mohatu would carry Ahadi out to a grassy field at night so he could gaze at the stars with his friends. Ahadi was quieter and more careful after the incident with Hifadhi, but with a loving and supportive father, and four wonderful close friends in his life, Ahadi was able to hold onto his happiness.
As the years passed, Ahadi grew into a quietly compassionate and thoughtful young lion, as wise and open-minded to nuance as his father before him, if a little less open to trusting those he didn’t know well. Uru grew into a powerful hunter and fighter, quick and clever with strategy in a way few could match, but also a deeply warm and caring presence, the eternal mom friend of their little group. The friendship between the two deepened over the years, growing into something more. After a lot of denial and flustered interactions and “gentle” encouragement from their friends, Ahadi and Uru began a relationship. Their love blossomed quickly after that, strengthened by the years of trust and close friendship that had preceded it. Shortly before Mohatu announced that he was going to step down and pass the throne onto Ahadi, the pair married.
At Ahadi and Uru’s coronation, Hifadhi’s son Jadi staged his coup, forcing Mohatu, Ahadi, and Uru out of Pride Rock and a good chunk of the kingdom. Mohatu crowned the pair properly not long after the coup, making Ahadi and Uru king and queen of a devastated and fractured kingdom. For the next several years, King Ahadi and Queen Uru were run ragged trying to hold their crumbling kingdom together, working out treaties with herds and hunters, figuring out how to space out the herds and hunters to keep everyone fed and watered, keeping hold of the borders as Jadi tried to chip away at them, etc.
They were overjoyed at the births of their sons, and did their best to be there for them, but their many duties to tend to their war-torn kingdom had them stretched so thin that they didn’t have as much time for their sons as they would wish. Mufasa was able to tag along for king lessons, but Taka was often left behind, and the boy’s bitterness over this unintentional neglect steadily grew.
During a particularly bad drought that dries up the few water sources Ahadi and Uru had in their part of the kingdom, Uru decided she must leave and try to find a source of water for the kingdom’s inhabitants to use. She first checked the lake Mohatu had once used in such a drought, but it was also dry. She remembered a particularly large lake closed in by the steep walls of a gorge she had come across during her travels with the hyenas as a cub - if she could find it again, it would more than suit the Pride Lands’ needs. She set off in search of the lake.
Uru soon found the lake she’d been seeking and resolved to negotiate with the local animals to sort out permission to use it. But the area seemed strangely bare of hunters, and the few herds fled at the sight of her. She finally managed to find a tough old tortoise willing to talk with her. The tortoise warned that the area had recently been taken over by a vicious pride of lions. They blocked predators from entering the narrow pass that led to the lake, and they ambushed prey animals when they came to drink. Everyone was terrified of them. Most of the herds had fled, as had all of the hunters.
With all of this in mind, Uru approached the narrow pass carefully. She was surprised to find herself greeted by a small delegation of lionesses, almost as though they had been waiting for her. They were all too eager to lead Uru to their kings. Uru could barely hide her astonishment as she was led to the same two lions who had taken over her father’s pride all those years ago. They, in turn, seemed to have no idea who she truly was. They greeted her with a sly appearance of friendliness, praising her to the skies as the widely-respected queen of the Pride Lands. They offered her a deal - she and King Ahadi must meet together with them and forge a formal alliance with their pride - in exchange, the kings would grant them access to the lake.
Uru knew better than to give away her identity now, or to show any distrust of the kings. The two lions were surrounded by their pride - Uru could see some of her old pridemates among their number, but there were far more than just her own Pride there. Some of the lions she recognized from prides that had neighbored her father’s; some she had never seen before. What she did know is that this pride greatly outnumbered her own since the civil war had divided them. They wouldn’t stand a chance if the kings attacked. She would have to be clever about this. Outwardly, she remained friendly and warm. She expressed her gratitude for the offer and gave her assent to the meeting. Under the kings' watchful eye, she sent a bird to the Pride Lands requesting Ahadi to come and meet with the kings. Under the kings' "friendly" insistence, she was to stay with their pride until Ahadi's arrival.
Once the kings had gone to sleep for the night, Uru made her way to some of her former pridemates in secret. They were stunned to realize that this mighty queen of the Pride Lands was the long-lost daughter of Lord Hodari and Mother Tamu. The young huntress Tamu had assigned to protect her and the cubs all those years ago stepped forward. She explained that she had managed to get the rest of the cubs to safety with a nearby pride, but the two kings had started taking over more and more territory, and had eventually taken over the pride she and the cubs were sheltering with. All cubs had been taken under the wings of the two kings and had been brainwashed into serving as their loyal guards. Some had resisted the kings' lies and still had their own minds, but there was a powerful circle of lions loyal to the kings who would protect them at all costs. The kings' cruelty and rash, foolish decisions had chased away the herds and bled the land dry, until they had been forced to move on in search of a new home. They had come here after hearing rumors of a civil war tearing the Pride Lands in half, leaving it vulnerable. They planned to ambush Ahadi and Uru at this meeting and kill them, then take over their half of the Pride Lands, use their superior numbers to conquer the other half, and claim the lands for their own. Many of the lions who had suffered under the kings' rule all these years now believed that all monarchs must be evil and cruel, so they didn't mind the idea of driving out more monarchs to claim a new home, but with Uru's assurance that this was not the case, they no longer wished to shed more blood on behalf of their cruel leaders.
Uru promised her old pridemates that if they helped her protect her home from this invasion, that she would help free them from the tyrannous kings. She and the huntress conferred for some time to form a plan, then sent a second bird in secret to warn Ahadi of the trap and inform him of the plan. Some hours before the meeting was to occur, some of Uru's allies among the pride had the king's strongest supporters lured away for a hunt. The meeting wasn't supposed to occur yet, so they thought they had time for a quick hunt. An injured wildebeest had been spotted drinking from the lake and would make an easy kill. As the hunters closed in, Uru's allies suddenly abandoned the hunt, and the supposedly-injured wildebeest turned on the hunters with a fierce strength. The rest of of the wildebeest's herd thundered into the lake's valley alongside Uru's allies, viciously attacking the hunters. This was one of the Pride Lands' herds, who had owed Uru a favor after she'd helped them sort out a diplomatic issue some time ago. With the combined strength of the wildebeests and Uru's allies, the kings' supporters turned tail and fled.
The kings had no idea that their strongest supporters had been chased away. They were irritated that their strongest guards were nowhere to be found, but simply assumed they'd gotten distracted on a hunt, and there were a few guards left anyway, so the meeting could go ahead as planned. But when they arrived to meet with the king, they found themselves confronted instead with the might of the Lion Guard. Uru's allies had also caught up at this point, so by the time the fight was over, the treacherous kings lay dead, and Uru's old pridemates, and all of the other lions held under the kings' thrall, were finally free. The huntress who had helped Uru come up with the plan thanked her profusely, and Uru thanked her in turn for helping her save the Pride Lands. Some of the lions returned to the lands that had been ravaged by the kings' rule, determined to restore the land and return to their old way of life. Some drifted away to join some of the nearby prides. Several of them, under the leadership of the huntress as their new Mother, chose to settle by the lake, this time keeping to their old laws and traditions so the land could flourish. The huntress would later have a daughter, and that daughter would have a son, who she would call Malka. As a nod of respect to the family that had raised her and the happy memories of her childhood, and to the family who had now helped save her home, Uru reclaimed her old name - she would now be Queen Masilahi of the Pride Lands.
By the time Masilahi and the Lion Guard returned to the Pride Lands, Jadi was dead, and the Pride Lands had been made whole once more. Masilahi was able to send some of the animals to the nearby lake to drink, while others used the watering holes that had been located in Jadi's part of the Pride Lands. King Ahadi and Queen Masilahi worked hard together in the years that followed to restore their fractured kingdom. By the time they handed the crown to their son Mufasa and retired together peacefully, the lands were flourishing once more. But little did they know of the bitterness that had been festering in the heart of their younger son, or of the darkness that awaited the land that they loved. Masilahi's old hyena clan had begun to change over the seasons. Many of the younger generation no longer looked at the lions with a friendly eye. They blamed Ahadi and Masilahi for the hardships brought on by the civil war. They blamed the older generation's unwillingness to break the rules to get them more food for their empty stomachs. Matriarch Banagi, once so revered and respected for her cunning and strength, was now mocked as nothing more than the royal family's lapdog, since she was the queen's sister and had taken a lioness for a mate. The winds in the clan were shifting, and it would only take a nudge from a manipulative young lion to send them spiraling down a dark path...
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Soooo yeah, lots of changes from my old fanfic, and a looooooooot of rambling, sorry about that. But hopefully this is interesting to some of you. Yes, Masilahi's father is now Tanglemane. I dunno, I realized it would work well with the direction I wanted to take her story. I know he says he was defeated by the two challengers because he was too old, but shh, we'll just ignore that detail. Maybe he was embarrassed at having been defeated in his prime and fudged the truth a little to make himself look better to Simba. Malka is also no longer Masi's nephew, but he's still descended from her old pride.
And yes, I essentially gave Ahadi the backstory that Mufasa is apparently getting in the new movie. I mean, I've always written him as an orphan who was then adopted and made heir of the Pride Lands, it's been that way in my stories for a solid decade now, so when I heard that that was the direction the new movie is taking Mufasa's story, I honestly found it kinda hilarious that they incorporated a story for him so similar to the one I gave his dad. I just tweaked it a bit to a flood and being carried in by the river to better fit the details of the new movie. That's why the announcement about the new movie made me want to draw these guys so badly - it reminded me so much of the story I came up with for Ahadi. I also changed it so that Nyeusi isn't his brother and there's no adoptive mother - aroace Mohtu for the win. ^^ Mohatu is a much better father in this story as well, and a better king, truly deserving of the title of the Brightest Star.
I also had (perhaps a little too much) fun coming up with the concept for Masi's old pride, and her confrontation with them later in life. I had forgotten that she was MIA during the whole water buffalo incident, and realized that her being away from the Pride Lands for a while would be a great opportunity to confront her old pride again, just as she did in my old story, but this time helping to overthrow the two evil kings who'd driven out her father, rather than yelling at her abusive dad as she did in my old story. Ahadi and Masi are better parents in this version as well, with their neglect of Taka springing from being pulled in way too many directions by their duties because of the civil war, rather than intentionally ignoring/smothering him over grief due to the death of their first son. No Manufaa in this version either, he just didn't fit anywhere.
I think that's everything I wanted to cover! But feel free to ask if you have any questions.
