Cassandra Gunn

Cassandra Gunn is creator of the character Ultraviolet (a name she also goes by as an artist alias) and the Ukimori species. She is probably best known for her personal character and her m/m and crossdressing, gender-bending, or androgynous art.

Cassandra currently lives in London, England and has spent most of her working life in freelance illustration and tattoo design. She has been drawing anthropomorphic characters since she can remember, but first began to make her way into the online world of furry in late 2000. Before then most of her art was based on dark or Gothic fairy tales.

As of January 2008, Cassandra dedicates her time to creating a PC-based RPG as well as doing work for The Dark Gemini Project.

Fandom involvement
She was a guest of honour at RBW 2007.

She is also creating a PC-based RPG as well as doing work for The Dark Gemini Project.

Fursona
Ultraviolet is a character created by Cassandra Gunn back in 1998, and is also the artist's alias. Originally the character was a cat (Russian Blue), with fuchsia pink hair and a black tail, accompanied by a crystal broom and unicorn-horned raven. In 2000 Ultraviolet was redesigned. Sorceress and sex-vamp, she became a Ukimori, a heraldic unicorn and flying fox (bat) hybrid. Cassandra chose the combination because she wanted UV to be something of a contradiction, to mix something that is often misunderstood and associated with darkness, with something thought to be a representation of purity and associated with light.

Current character details
Ultraviolet is characterized as having luminous yellow-green eyes and silvery-grey fur. Her facial characteristics are very much like that of a flying-fox. Her ears are black and fuchsia on the inside and she has two piercings in each ear, a lip spike (labret piercing) and her nose is pink. Her strongest characteristics are her long spiraling, iridescent unicorn horn, massive black wings (with fuchsia flesh on the inside membrane), cloven hooves with black fur tufts around them, and black tail ending in a long purple tuft. Her hands are best describes as claws, though they are actually hooves, starting at the last joint. There is noticeable webbing between her fingers.

Character tastes and personality
She's most often associated with gothic, rave, and cyber culture. Primarily she wears black and white stripy tights, goggles, corsets, and long faux fur coats.

Her personality is very bright, flirty, dominant and playful. Some think she's a bit of a saucy vixen. She would grin agreeably.

She is not at all shy about getting what she wants and won't let anything get in her way and can be a bit of a diva at times. But at the end of the day she is true to those she loves and would fiercely protect them. She also feels adamantly in tune with nature and uses her innate magical abilities mostly for helping heal, care for, and protect Shi'Imora.

She also adamantly loves fruit, honey and has a desperate weak spot for pretty-boys.

Character background and story
Created by the human Dr. Hira, Ultraviolet was the first successful bat and heraldic unicorn hybrid. Her real given name was Asha Hira, named after the good doctor, but it was her project name, Ultraviolet, that stuck (called so, because the doctor found through various experiments that Asha had UV reactive eyes and markings on her horn, fur, in her ears and wing membrane).

Living on the planet of Shi'Imora, and growing up in the Solarian elf village Mikobi-Rhin, it was there with the elves that she grew and learned along side her childhood friend, Rikaru. Through the Solarians, she learned about magic, love and the world around her. She grew up to witness the war against man, when much of Shi' Imora and its denizens rose up against the shallow, destructive nature of humanity and destroyed them. Afterwards she took to living primarily in solitude, away from the place where her creator was murdered, in a ruined human city cathedral.

More images of the character can be found at various websites, such as VCL, Fur Affinity, Yerf and others.

Shi'Imora
The world created by Cassandra Gunn, encompassing all her stories, creatures, and ideas.

Shi' Imora exists in our own solar system on another dimension and is, in fact, the size of Jupiter. This 'planet' is actually a thinking and feeling being who activley creates and destroys life on and within her.

'She' is referred to as a female, as when she communicates with those who live on Shi'Imora, the voice they hear is feminine. Most Shi'Imoran's of any spiritual nature have some form of understanding of her and how to communicate with her. Though she often keeps this very limited. She even has a pulse that can be felt and heard if the denizens take a moment to listen.

Her nature is impartial and though she is intelligent and feeds off emotions, she cannot express emotion.

Ukimori
The Ukimori are a creature species created by Cassandra Gunn for her currently unreleased Hidden Guardian short stories. There were only six Ukimori created, Ultraviolet having been the first made and the only female.

Appearance
Ukimori are a 'man-made' genetic hybrid inhabiting the world of Shi'Imora. They are a cross between any species of bat, particularly fruit eaters, and heraldic unicorn. They display the head of the bat they share genes with, large ears, and the unicorn's horn spiraling out from the center their forehead. The wings are large, spreading out from their back seperately from their arms, though there is a membrane that connects between the arm of the wing and the back of the arms themselves. They have large sturdy shoulder-blades and an elongated rib-cage to support the wing appendages. The torso, arms, hands and upper legs, are morphic and alike to that of a human, but their proportions are slightly elongated and covered in generally short, soft fur. They have long digitigrade or unguligrade legs with cloven hooves, similar to that of an elk. The tail is much like a lion's, except that the fur at the end is long and hair-like. They often have a trail of this hair on both the top or underside of the tail.

Ukimori markings and coloration vary a lot depending on the genes of the bat. Generally the inner-ear color and wing membrane match in color, while varying from the actual fur color.

Aside from the nomal distinctions between gender found in most mammals, there are a few other differences. Females tend to have thin fur and only a small line of longer fluff going down their backs and ending midway down. Males have slightly longer fur than females and a fluffy mane around their necks which also goes down the back to the base of the tail. A female's horn is longer than males, while males generally have larger canines which are still noticeable even when the mouth is closed. The base of the male's tail is thicker and almost reptile-like, in comparison to that of a female.

Habitat and diet
Ukimori prefer to build a 'cove' or home for themselves in temperate or tropical climates - anywhere away from vast cities and covered with dense forests. Though they are fairly shy, solitary creatures, they can be found in cities when they feel the need to socialize.

The Ukimori diet is as varied as the bat species they were created from. Most, like Ultraviolet, perfer a diet of fruit, vegetables, nectars, honey, and even some grain and fish. There is one who hunts both the small insects and the giant insects of the plains, while another is a blood feeder.

Lifespan and reproduction
Having been a man-made hybrid created as an experiment in immortality, Ukimori are sterile and incapable of producing any offspring. The growing and aging process seems to end after 25 to 30 years and thereafter are no physical changes. However, the Ukimori are not truly immortal. The seem to live an ongoing lifespan, and though they have very strong immune systems, can succumb to severe illness or even unnatural death.

Being unable to have offspring, the Ukimori have no mating season. They simply mate for pleasure, not only with each other but often outside their species with other sentient beings. They have also been known to 'hunt' for sexual prey or seduce people only to provide that 'prey' to another Ukimori as a gift: unusual practices for most Shi'Imoran creatures. The Ukimori tend to be very vocal during actual mating. It is not uncommon for them to draw blood from biting and clawing during the throes of passion.