#help I've adopted 20 children

[home-over-horizon]

The Long Post (the really rushed summary post):

((This is just gonna be a post instead of a whole page, so it can be accessed from mobile.

The stuff going down in Jaggedstar’s clan:

Shit starts with Hazefall and Jaggedthorn, plotting to take power in their clan. They decide that since Jaggedthorn currently has the better reputation within the clan, he's going to be the one to grapple for deputyship under the current leader, an older tom called Icestar, and as soon as he gets the position and offs Icestar, he'll name Hazefall his deputy. Hazefall also knows that she'll have an easier time disposing of her brother than she will Icestar, mostly because she could more easily justify it as "For the good of the clan". Over a few moons, Jaggedthorn cozies up to Icestar (and also low-key starts flirting with a she-cat from a rival clan, because he's just an asshole who likes leading cats on) and Hazefall starts to figure out how to ice the current deputy. Eventually, she just. Does it while on a small hunting patrol somewhere near Twolegplace, so she can blame it on loners who don't have the ability to defend themselves from accusations at gatherings.

Jaggedthorn is made the new deputy, and he and Hazefall decide to use the cat he's been leading on to slowly bait their clans into war, providing a solid cover-up for Murder™. Their plan slowly unfolds, and Jaggedthorn uses the fight to murder Icestar without his clanmates catching onto it. The she-cat he was leading on (rival clan leader's daughter) had ended up pregnant by Jaggedthorn, and is exiled after her clanmates (who've probably lost a good number of their loved ones because of this nonsense) figure out that she gave up Vital Information to another clan. She goes to Jaggedstar, who refuses to take her in. She leaves the territories in bitterness.

Jaggedstar throws his clan into needless conflict with Twolegplace cats and other clans because he's maintaing the story that their clanmates were killed by outside forces. Hazefall fucking screams inside because "Great STARCLAN you left a vital fucking wittiness alive why didn't you kill her this is the Number One Situation where you should off the witness!" and she's just dreading the day where she has to spin the cover story explaining the violent clan leader's bastard child.

The overworked medicine cat and their apprentice (Briarclaw) do their best to take care of the clan, but the severity of many warriors’ injuries lead to sick cats and pregnant/nursing queens not being cared for quite properly, driving up the infant and maternal mortality rates and the number of preventable deaths from minor illnesses that don't get proper treatment in time. Senior medicine cat dies of exhaustion, and their apprentice is left to deal with the whole hecking clan alone. After a particularly rough kitting, one of the queens dies shortly after giving birth to her two kits, Cherrykit and Redkit. With a father who died a few weeks prior, and an overtaxed surrogate mother, big-brother Briarclaw steps in to be a role model for the two kittens (”I thought medicine cats weren’t supposed to have families?” “We’re not supposed to have kits, there’s no code about having siblings.”) As a result, Cherrykit and Redkit learn a little bit of basic medicine, mostly about how to manage cuts and scratches and the like.

Once the kits were old enough, they were apprenticed. Cherrypaw was given a cat whom I have not developed as a mentor, and Redpaw was given to Hazefall. Hazefall went out of her way to instill an unyielding loyalty to the clan and the code in Redpaw, including that “The leader’s word is the warrior code” clause. At the very end of his apprenticeship, Cherrypaw overhears Jaggedstar and Hazefall discussing how they would continue to hide Icestar’s murder from the clan. Jaggedstar realizes that he was being watched by one of the brothers, but isn’t super sure which, so he resorts to seeing which one reacts more noticeably to being subtly threatened into silence. Cherrypaw is still young enough to be not great at maintaining a poker face, leading Jaggedstar to figure out that he was the one to hear him confess to murder.

Cherrypaw and Redpaw are made full warriors, Cherrystep and Redpool (they also stand as reminders of Jaggedstar’s Bad Naming Choices), and, during their vigil, Jaggedstar tells Briarclaw to meet him in the woods. He murders Briarclaw, and makes Very Obvious Sounds to lure one of the young warriors to investigate. His plan is to A: Frame Cherrystep for murder and exile him or B: Murder Redpool as a threat to Cherrystep and just blame the two deaths on foxes. Cherrystep goes to investigate, and Jaggedstar immediately beats him up in order to make it more believable that Cherrystep had just fought an older cat. Redpool goes back into camp to alert the rest of the clan, because at this point there’s Definitely a Fight and it might be an invasion. The whole clan comes outside to find their medicine cat dead and their leader restraining Cherrystep, who is justifiably Not Okay and incoherent. One rushed trial in a society where it’s illegal to question your leader later and Cherrystep is banished, a bloody mess. Hazefall immediately pulls Jaggedstar aside and nearly knocks off a couple of his lives then and there because “WHY CAN’T YOU JUST KILL THE WITNESS WITHOUT DRAMATICS? WHY CAN’T YOU JUST! DO! THINGS! EFFICIENTLY?” The whole clan slowly gaslights Redpool into believing that Cherrystep actually did a murder.

The stuff that went on in the formation of Reedclan:

The she-cat who I still don’t have a name for gives birth and raises the only surviving kit just beyond clan territories. She names her kit Violetkit and gives her the closest thing to a warrior’s upbringing that she can, making sure to teach about the code (with emphasis on the “Always help a kit in danger, even if it’s not from your clan” clause). She does her best to give her kit a proper apprenticeship as well, and goes as far as to give her a proper apprentice title. She also teaches her kit that her father, Jaggedstar, is an absolute pile of shit who deserves to rot forever in purgatory. Violetkit/paw grows up with a general distaste for her father.

After Violetpaw has been an “apprentice” for almost six moons, an encounter with a stray dog leads to her mother’s death. After burying her mother and sitting vigil for her, Violetpaw heads for the clan territories, the only suitable response she can come up with being to confront Jaggedstar In Person.

She manages to catch him alone in the woods, and is surprised to see that he’s a surprisingly small, unassuming cat. She does an “Hello. My name is Inego Montoya” and introduces herself Like That. Jaggedstar, amused that her mother would go so far as to apprentice this kit alone and frustrated that there is, in fact, a living witness to his nonsense, snarls that “If your mother was so confident to give you a warrior’s upbringing, then I guess I owe you a warrior’s name. From this moment onward, you will be known as Violetbane. Starclan as my witness, you and your mother are the bane of my existence!”

He then proceeds to attempt to silence her properly, but Violetbane was, in fact, prepared for a fight, and she overpowers him sufficiently enough to convince him to turn back for reinforcements. Violetbane, wisely, takes this opportunity to get out of dodge.

She returns to the general area where she and her mother had been living and vows to be a better warrior than her father. She turns this motivation towards building a clan from the ground up; eventually gathering enough formerly unaffiliated cats around the lake to badger their way into a Gathering alongside Ivyclan.

Ivyclan Nonsense:

Cherrystep, distraught and injured, makes an effort to put distance between himself and his murderous former leader as soon as he is exiled. Eventually, he drags himself into a cave overlooking a stream among the hills outside of clan territory. He rests there for a while, his shoulder too recently injured to do much in the way of hunting, but he does find some goldenrod growing nearby which he uses to ward off infection as best as he can.

His luck improves upon meeting the one-eyed loner Thorn, an elderly tom who is open to working together to survive. Thorn (later Thornstrike) makes himself the first member of what will eventually snowball into Ivyclan, and takes the position of resident grandpa. The two slowly stabilize a life in the system of caves in the hillside, and as they establish a territory, their group increases in size, cat by cat, until Cherrystep has to face the fact that he’s now the leader of a motley little clan. Most of the new Ivyclan cats are the cats that didn’t fit in with other cat colonies, or who were displaced by Jaggedstar’s aggressiveness in Twolegplace. After meeting the Reedclan cats on a patrol one day, Cherrystep and Violetbane (soon to be named Violetstar) form a firm alliance in the face of the forest clans, and Jaggedstar in particular.

After both Violetstar and Cherrystep are granted their nine lives, a plan is made to crash a Gathering and expose Jaggedstar’s crimes to the whole forest. That’s generally where things stand right now.))

[home-over-horizon]

((Wild how I’m just slowly dumping stuff that’s been done for like a week here while I perish in a pit of Cursed Projects and hope that Tunglr doesn’t decide that my cat art is NSFW.))

[home-over-horizon]

((Oh, sons? Good boys?? Lmao I’m still dumping art for these kiddos and not getting things done lol. That should change p soon though, because Project Hell has been escaped and I’m once again free to think about battle cats to my dumbass little heart’s content.))