Stronghide

***Spoiler Warning:** Plot and/or ending details follow.*

**Stronghide** was an antagonistic rhinoceros, and the leader of Stronghide's Crash, who killed Great Mother with help from Stinger Crownleaf. At the Great Gathering, he claimed to be able to speak Skytongue, the language of the birds. As only a Great Parent has the ability to speak and understand Skytongue, the other animals of Bravelands had accepted him as the new Great Father, though this claim later turned out to be false.

## History

### Pre-Series

Stronghide had a daughter named Brighteyes. She was joyful and loved, but then became seriously ill and Stronghide took her to Great Mother Sun Strider, who sadly said that, because of how far and deep the illness had gotten, there was nothing that she could do. Brighteyes died and Stronghide hated Sun ever since, falsely believing her to be arrogant and not caring for anything that is not an elephant. At the same time, he wished he could be the first rhino to become a Great Parent.

### *Broken Pride*

One night, Stronghide is having a meeting with his crash by the Watering Hole, only to discover Sky watching them out of curiosity. Partly due to his hatred for her maternal grandmother, Great Mother Sun, as well as his jealousy of his kind never becoming a Great Parent, his first impulse was to wound her in order to scare her off, or even unwittingly break the Code with assassination if he went to far in his rage. Sky encouraged him not to, and that is when he decided to impulsively tell her that he had come to believe that her grandmother was arrogant, not caring for any other creature in Bravelands that wasn't an elephant. Sky told him that he was obviously wrong, which caused Stronghide, due to his hate for anything or anyone connected to Great Mother Sun, got even angrier, believing that Sky was insulting his intelligence.

At that moment, Great Mother Sun appeared to break up the unnecessary argument, and Stronghide yelled at the grandmother elephant in blind fury that he had been insulted by one of her family members, and that Sun herself would one day pay for it.

A day or two later, Stronghide sat apart from the rest of crash, still in a state of anger, confusion and sorrow. He was then approached by Stinger, who used the blindness of Stronghide's anger to convince him to kill Great Mother Sun, for, as Stinger told him, he could both avenge Brighteyes and possibly become the next Great Parent from killing her. In his angry, sad, and confused state, Stronghide found Stinger's words to make sense, believing that he was about to do a noble deed.

Later, during predawn of the following day, Stronghide ambushed and killed Great Mother Sun by impaling her in the side with his horns, driving her into the watering hole, where she was killed by crocodiles. One member of his crash, Silverhorn, watched from the bushes and she was shocked by this behavior.

### *Code of Honor*

As worried animals gathered at the waterhole, where Great Mother Sun's body lay, Stronghide announced to everyone that he believed to be her successor. He was not exactly lying to them, for he *thought* he was telling the truth. He genuinely believed that murdering Sun had made him Great Father - completely unaware he was about how the process truly worked. At the same time he spun a fake story about having a dream last night about finding Sun's dead body at the watering hole

One day at the Watering Hole the animals rebelled against Stronghide, because the answers he gave them for their problems caused more harm than good; at the same time, they had found out from Stinger that Stronghide was the one who actually killed Great Mother Sun. This confused and worried him, because he now realized that Stinger had just backstabbed him. The animals fought and injured him and eventually the animals exiled him from Bravelands. Thorn Strongbranch followed Stronghide as he walked in exile. Stronghide eventually stopped walking and slumped down on one side of a hill. Thorn met him there and Stronghide questioned if he was there to kill him, because Stinger Crownleaf had sent him. Thorn said that he had come on his own terms. Stronghide told him that Stinger could convince anyone into doing anything. After Stronghide confirmed that Stinger had persuaded him to kill Great Mother Sun, Thorn confirmed his suspicions. Stronghide said how angry he was at Great Mother Sun, what Stinger said had made sense and he thought it was the noble deed to do. He then said how he now thought that what he did was wrong and that he should have never trusted Stinger. Thorn proposed that he himself would defeat Stinger and Stronghide questioned him on if he was really able to do it and Thorn promised him so. Vultures had settled above Stronghide and he said that even though he was the false Great Father for such a short time, he knew that the vultures knew when a creature would die. After Thorn left he died in his place, peacefully.

Later, Babble and Chatter the oxpeckers, discovered Stronghide's dead corpse, yet despite the fact that he was dead, they still thought they might find tasty arthropods on his body. That is when they were visited by Windrider's Vulture Flock, who informed them that the Great Spirit had returned and that a candidate for the next *true* Great Parent had been found.

## Errors in *Code of Honor*

* Stronghide is called "Stringhide" twice.