Moonsbreath
Ever wonder just who was Clearbrook and One-Eye's daughter? The Alternaverse has your answer.

Moonsbreath was born about three hundred years before the Holt burned down, after the first Recognition of One-Eye and Clearbrook. She's a tanner and a gatherer, and she serves as an Elder to Swift in the post-Fire days. She fell in love with Rain the Healer when she was still a cub, and waited impatiently until she was old enough to become his lovemate. It wasn't long - in elf years at least, before they decided they were ready for cubs. Rain forced Recognition between the two of them, and Pike was born.

A few years later Recognition struck spontaneously, and Moonsbreath had Rainsong. The tribe was just beginning to get over the shock of a forced Recognition, only to have another cub on its hands in less than two eights. About twenty years later Moonsbreath and Rain Recognized again and had Shale.

Now an Elder, Moonsbreath continues to work making garments for the tribe at the Great Holt, but she has expanded into weaving cotton and linen as well, and relies on Newstar, Teru and Tass as fellow weavers.

From infancy, Quicksilver shared a strong bond with Sunstream. Just as young Swift idolized Skywise and followed him around everywhere, so did Quicksilver become young Suntop's shadow as soon as she could toddle after him. They shared a den for many years when Quicksilver was a small child, and as Quicksilver entered adolescence, everyone began secretly placing bets on how much longer it would be before they became lovemates. Sure enough, the pair discovered each other's soulnames when Quicksilver was sixteen, and have been together ever since.

Quicksilver has her father's fascination with the stars and the Palace. While she has no specific magic, she can amplify Sunstream's magic by her presence, and she rarely leaves his side. She also acts as a practical check to Sunstream's sometimes naive enthusiasm, much as Skywise acts as a check to Swift's impulsiveness.

A precocious child from the start, Weatherbird proved her unique gifts as an infant. Most elf children take years to fully develop their sending powers, but Weatherbird's telepathy was flawless at birth. When Weatherbird did learn to speak, she preferring humming and singing to herself to any practical communication. She loved to pretend, and would often spend days at a time mimicking forest animals, pretending to be one of them. She never grew out of living in her own world, and as result, few elves truly understand her, save for her parents and her lifemate Cheipar.

When Haken reappeared, Weatherbird was assigned as his "minder", and while he chafed under her surveillance, the High One came to respect her magic powers. He has invited her to join him in Oasis, but Weatherbird prefers to remain in the New Land, travelling in the Palace or the Wild Hunt, and most recently helping Aurek with his latest project - a new Great Egg.

Gypsy Moth
In early November '04, a new elf graced the pages of Sun Girl's Art with a cryptic caption explaining that she gets her eyes from one parent, her hair from another, and that she was the product of a second Recognition. And it didn't take fans too long to figure out who the mysterious Gypsy Moth was. Yes, indeed, she is Swift and Rayek's mid-life crisis baby! And she's quickly became one of the more popular charas in the Alternaverse.

Born 950 years after the Great Fire drove the elves from Father Tree, Gypsy Moth never faced the dangers her older brother and sister did as cubs, and is very much a child of the new generation. Even her name comes from a New Land animal unheard-of to the older generation. But Gypsy's a Wolfrider born and bred, and more than one elf has commented that her devil-may-care tomboyishness harkens back to the days of Bearclaw and Mantricker. As a child, she spent most of her days in the wolf caves, much to Rayek's disquiet. She also had a wolf's fear of open water, but she learned to conquer her fear by sailing on Wavecatcher Dolphin - in no small part to impress her future-lovemate Sandpiper, an Islander from Green Moon Bay.

After Sandpiper, Gypsy's closest friend was Kimo. The pair experienced something not-unlike Recognition when Kimo saved Gypsy from a flash flood. It proved very hard to Gypsy to accept that Kimo chose the mortality that accompanies his wolfblood. Following Kimo's death, Gypsy distanced herself from her Wolfrider kin for a time, and learned the art of seafaring from the Islanders.

Now, thousands of years later, Gypsy Moth has fused Wolfrider and Islander culture to form a new seafaring tribe, called the Waveriders. On her immense ship, the Sea Holt, her tribe journeys across the seas of Abode, carrying trade goods between the New Land and the Homeland, and making new discoveries in uncharted waters.

Kit
Everyone in ElfQuest fandom let out a squeal of delight when the preview pages of Searcher and the Sword revealed that Strongbow and Moonshade would be having a third cub at the regrown Father Tree Holt. Those first few pictures led to the creation of Kit.

Kit was born in the years following the return the Return to Blue Mountain, when the Wolfrider elders lived in peace at Thorny Mountain.The Thorny Mountain Holt had no official howlkeeper, and Kit decided to fill that niche. But simply telling the howls seemed rather unsatisfying to Kit. Once the howl was done, words could be forgotten, and only dreamberries could get them back. Kit decided she wanted to make the howls last forever.

She found the answer in her mother's tanning skills. Soon Kit started taking scraps of hides and damaged leathers that could not make clothes or bedding, and began carving, sewing and painting little symbols on them. Over the centuries, she developed a complex, pictographic writing system, and created hundreds of "howling hides."

Upon meeting Littlefire, the son of Vaya and Aurek, Kit felt an immediate bond with the eccentric Glider. Under her patient tutoring, Littlefire slowly adapted to life with the Wolfriders, while Kit began to understand how he saw the world. The good friends soon became lovemates, then lifemates. Kit had hoped to have a child with Littlefire one day, but she was fated to Recognize One-Eye instead, and bore a daughter, Mink.

Despite her relative youth compared to her tribemates, Kit was one of the first Wolfriders of the Eldertribe to die of natural causes. She developed a heart condition in middle age and died peacefully in her sleep. Yet Kit's spirit did not go into the Evertree or to the Palace - instead she went into Littlefire's body. Their powerful psychic bond ensured the two could share his body quite comfortably. Together, they continued Kit's work as howlpainter, and over the years a symbiosis developed, the true extent of which remains unknown to the other Wolfriders. Generations of elves grew up knowing their howlpainter only as a lanky Glider. But enough immortal elves remembered Kit in her first body - a skilled archer who became the first Wolfrider scribe. 

After the Schism at the Evertree, Kit and Littlefire led the surviving members of the Evertree Wolfriders to the Great Egg, where they debated their next move. Ultimately, Kit and Littlefire led their followers to the planet Homestead to start a new life as the New Blood Wolfriders. Kit made a momentous decision of her own - to have Melati make her a new body.

Kit's new form was subtly different - a result of reconstructing her cellular matrix from blood samples of her close relatives. In her second body, she has gray eyes and a slightly sharper chin.

Kit now leads the New Blood Wolfriders as chieftess, freeing Littlefire to develop his own powers while learning to fly a starstone pod. They retain their strong psychic connection, and each can see and hear and feel what the other does. The pair have recently welcomed their many-times descendent Foxglove into their den.

Spar
Following close on the heels of the reinvention of Tam, the next big character re-write in the infant Alternaverse was the creation of Spar, Redlance and Nightfall's daughter and Tyleet's unholy doppelganger. Sun Girl and I had often talked of making a new daughter for Redlance and Nightfall - a tougher, more Wolfridery, less... well, touchy-feely sort of elf. Feldspar, soon shortened just to Spar.

 Though she was conceived, like Tyleet, in the Palace with a healer's aid, Spar bears little resemblance to her canon-counterpart. She has Tyleet's reckless attitude, but lacking her sugary disposition Spar developed a talent for letting her temper and impulsiveness get the better of her. When Redlance became chief of his own holt, Spar's and her sense of entitlement grew exponentionally, and she was crushed when she realized she would get no special privileges as chief's daughter. Spar split her time with the Wolfriders between the Great Holt and the Eldertribe, but when she joined Sunstream and her agemates on an expedition to the Forevergreen, she was captured by humans and delivered up to their "god" Door.

Door forced Spar's soulname from her, and held her captive by it. But Spar felt compassion for the captive Glider, and a hesitant love grew between the two. After her friends freed her and Door from the humans, Spar chose to stay behind with her "mate." When Haken contacted Door some fifty years later, inviting him north, Spar followed. Initially skeptical of Haken's plans, once Spar Recognized Door she knew there was no going back. Spar helped found Oasis and became a leader in the new community.

Spar ended up bearing Door four children in all - including the twins Wren and Skylark. Her full hair is a little brighter orange-red than Tyleet's, she has light green eyes. She inherited her father's treeshaping powers, though she never achieved any great artistry on Abode. In the more magic-friendly atmosphere of Homestead, however, she has come into her own as a magic-user.

Cricket
Cricket was born one night in late May 2004 when I was brainstorming for an eventual lovemate for Tass. I remembered Starfire, the cute li'l logo Wendy designed for a NASA space shuttle mission. More importantly, I remembered that scathing look Skywise gave Starfire on the Matter of OPinion at the back of ElfQuest 17 (Oct 97), furious that Starfire made it into space before he did. I suddenly thought: "Little Brother."

The second child of Shale and Eyes High, Cricket was born to be a thorn in Skywise's side. As a child he got into all sorts of michief, and as an adult, he was always far too interested in the Now of Wolf-Thought to share his brother's love of the stars. Together with his agemate/lovemate Tass, he was the terror of the Great Holt - forever addled on dreamberries, relying on his charisma to save him as he got into one scrape after another. The years have mellowed Cricket slightly, though to Skywise he will always be the foolish cub who can never take things seriously - a rather damning charge coming from Skywise, of all people! Cricket, for his part, will always consider his big brother something of an "old growler."

Cricket believes in free love and acceptance, and for all his teasing of Skywise, hasn't a judgmental bone in his body. He wouldn't dream of being possessive, and shares freely - even to the point of his own soulname. While spending time in Oasis, he denned with Maleen, and when he learned of her deep desire for a child, he offered to let Pool force Recognition between them, as a gift to her. That Maleen would raise the baby without him did not bother him - he imagined he would have many years to get to spend with his child later.

The sudden death of Yosha was a blow to Cricket, and the old wound was reopened millennia later when he met Yosha's new incarnation: Beast. But true to form, Cricket soon accepted and adapted, and tried to befriend the new elf.

The happiest day of Cricket's life was when Beast regained his memories as Yosha. Father and son have since gone on to establish a strong bond. Cricket visits Beast often on Homestead, and is delighted to be a grandfather to little Naga. 

Cricket inherited his father's metallic silver hair, and his mother's deep blue eyes.

Tass
Venka once said that "fire and wind breed water" when trying to explain how Rayek and Swift produced her. In Tass's case water and water bred fireworks. Spoiled rotten by her doting father, she learned at an early age how to use her charm to her advantage - and how a well-timed temper tantrum will always work in a pinch. Tass stuck close to Cricket, her agemate, throughout childhood, and as they hit puberty it seemed eminently reasonable that they should become lovemates. The two are best friends, and enthusiastic fur-mates, and though both ended up Recognizing other elves, they always come back to each other. Why break a good habit?

Tass inherited the best of both her parents' magic, and combines Zhantee's physical shielding with Venka's blocking/psychic shielding powers. She is strong enough to stun even a High One with her sending, a talent that came in handy when dealing with the feuding Haken and Timmain. But Tass is quite content to leave the adventuring to others, and enjoy a life of leisure, either in the rainforests of the Great Holt, or with her kin in Oasis.

In recent centuries, Tass has become quite interested in the systems of trade that have developed between the tribes. Inspired by the commerce of the Islanders, she is experimenting with the notion of using troll-gold as the base currency, replacing more traditional barter methods.

Tass is tiny, even by Wolfrider standards, and stands a full half-head shorter than her mother and father. She often enhances her diminuative stature in her clothing choices, to appear as delicate and doll-like as possible. Tass is a bit of a clothes horse. She has her mother's straight black hair and Zhantee's hazel-brown eyes.