Tate

## Appearance

Tate is very tall, with a notably "mature" and humanoid body especially when compared to the other animals. It's unclear what animal she is, but she has large fluffy ears, horns, and bat-like wings. Her fur is primarily brown, with some lighter and darker markings throughout her body. Her "clothing" is made of stone and she typically is seen wearing very little.

## Personality

She gives the appearance of being a very mysterious and divine figure. The animals in the forest look up to and even worship her, trusting her to guide them. Ironically, this was a role she had previously rejected, and is far from her real personality. Any animals who know of her existence see her as a merciful yet indifferent god, however she is not indifferent at all. After failing to protect the earth, she became very passionate about protecting it. Her passion didn’t change the fact that she was clumsy and unsure of herself. In spite of her incompetence, she is quite resilient.

## History

Tate was born to be a protector of earth, it was her domain. It is unclear what her exact origins are, but she was born sort of instinctually knowing what she needed to do.

While having reign over and protecting an entire planet may seem like a huge deal, to her it was so small in scale in comparison with the size of the universe. But, even the seemingly small job felt like too much for her. She felt as if the divine gift she'd been blessed with had been wasted on her. She went into hiding, retreating into stasis (see abilities), and essentially slept for 1000 years while neglecting her responsibilities.

An unknown force began destroying the earth, and she didn't wake up and catch wind of it until it was too late. Unfortunately, she was only able to save an incredibly small fraction, that fraction being The Forest. Devastated by her failure at her one purpose in life, she began working tirelessly to preserve what she could. The rest of the world was a barren wasteland that was out of her control, but not the forest.

And what use was it to keep the forest safe if no one lived in it? Using her powers of manipulation, she lead a large community of animals to the forest. She kept a close eye on them, but unfortunately she could only do so much, the people still had free will, and free will includes doing things that suck.

One way she kept the forest safe is by training apprentices. She chose a young red panda that was part of the first group that'd come to the forest. The panda acted as a sort of prophet, being one of very few that she spoke directly to. And, they could learn to use her powers on a much smaller scale. When that panda had children and eventually died, she trained their child, and theirs after that, and that process has gone on for generations.

In the modern day, while Sunny is alive, there is a new crisis for Tate to deal with. The quality of life for the members of The Cat Kingdom was going down significantly, and resources were being depleted at an alarming rate. This was because the monarchy was greedy and their way of running things simply wasn't sustainable.

At first, she tried communicating with her current apprentice, Alina. She told Alina to pass on the message that the queen and prince should no longer be in charge. This, however, ended with Alina losing her job and being replaced by her sister, Carrie. Tate knew she needed to find a new way of influencing them.

Frantically panicking and searching for a way to take Hubert and Sonia out of power, she ended up just putting them into stasis, and hoping that would put in motion a series of events that would lead to prosperity in the forest. Sunny was different than nearly every member of the royal family before her. Tate had hope that under her rule, things could be different. That proved to be untrue, so Tate gave the villagers the extra nudge they needed to overthrow Sunny and do away with the monarchy system entirely.

She still had compassion in her heart for Sunny, so she saw to it that Sunny wouldn't leave the forest. That compassion would cause problems when Sunny tried to take back the crown, but that was shut down fairly quickly. Sunny chose to leave the forest after that, which Tate was opposed to, but she guessed that she had meddled in Sunny's life enough at that point, and let her go.

The toppling of the monarchy *was* the push the villagers needed, Tate finally allowed herself to relax a bit as the forest began a new path. It wasn't instant prosperity, but they would get there some day.

## Abilities

### Plantmancing

She can control the growth of plants, however this only works when the environmental conditions allow for it.

### Manipulation

While she is very limited in this ability, she is able to manipulate people's decisions.

### Existence Outside of Space

By default, Tate exists on an entirely different plane from the "normal" mortal characters. She is usually akin to a ghost, choosing instead to influence their lives as an invisible force, and only appearing to them if she feels it will help influence them.

### Stasis

As a defense mechanism, she can entirely disappear from space and time and go into a sort of "stasis". It's similar to sleeping, or not existing for a period of time. She can also put others into this state.

### Apprenticeship

The Zhang family can inherit her powers on a relatively small scale, after training for some time.

## Trivia

* She was an adoptable I bought from Shgurr back in 2016.
* She uses her divine intervention to prevent incest. Animals tend to only have kids with the same species, so she will lead outsiders into the forest to prevent inbreeding. This may seem like an odd fact but a small, contained community where animals only have kids with the same species seems like its prone to something like that happening and it was bugging me so badly. So there: real in universe reason why it wouldn't happen.
* If the animals in the wasteland knew of her existence, they would likely despise her, seeing as they had effectively been abandoned by god.
* While Tate lures animals into the forest, she practically never lets anyone out.