#medicineri

[mallowstep]

daisy in “ashes”

or, nonspecifically, what are cats like goldenflower, ferncloud, and daisy getting up to, anyway?

this is tied to my thoughts on medicinery, so if you’re not caught up, a summary: med cats now only spend about 50% of their time doing “medicine” and it’s more osteopathic than in the books.

[1.7k words, 6 minute read]

daisy's kin (i just finished it)

so i just finished daisy's kin and 😗👌 am i happy with it.

i've always been exploring this, like, i'm lowkey obsessed with developing the role of the nursery queen, and...i don't know what i expected, but this was nice to read.

it was good both that thunderclan valued her and hnnng it was so good.

obsessed, i'm obsessed.

but curiously enough, i'm going to refrain from focusing (too much) on the story part of it. i just, this quote stands in my mind

That is important work.

snow, in response to daisy telling her about her role in thunderclan.

like, (a) it is, and it feels so good to read a book acknowledging that, and (b) it is, and i'm really happy that everyone agrees.

so anyway, i feel like the latest warriors release was tapped in to my brain.

first, it had all of this stuff that happens in mtbnsof (squirrelstar, if you don't read my fic/can't keep track of acronyms, which, understandable), or is going to happen in mtbnsof.

i kind of spoiled a lot of stuff in my book notes, but i'm not doing that again, so moving on.

anyway, i wasn't really excited for daisy's kin and spotfur's rebellion, i just wanted the blackfoot novella.

but damn, i was wrong.

i felt like someone had a line into my brain because daisy's life is exactly what i wanted it to be.

i'm going to talk about that in a moment i just really don't want to understate how fantastic it is to see a warriors novella expand and develop these ideas. i strongly urge you to read daisy's kin if you haven't already. it's really, really good. i'm being deliberately vague about the plot to encourage you to read it.

i think this might go as far as repairing the hole in my heart from "leafpool's wish." i don't think there's anything that can fix the brain rot (although the line in SFR, where she's like "adoption is valid," is close), but the hole? that's healing because of daisy's kin.

and y'all already know how much i hate leafpool's wish.

chapter five: advent

so if you don't read my fic "ashes," chapter five (advent) was published april 10th, and the basic summary is it's the first 3 months of holly/jay/lion's life.

it's a chapter i like, we're going to do a quick breakdown. there are spoilers for this chapter, and also probably the future of the fic. depending on when i actually publish this essay, they may or may not have been covered, so read at your own risk.

so the basic summary of advent is this:

ashfur meets his children

daisy apologizes for not supporting squilf

ashfur announces his children to thunderclan

sandstorm offers motherly advice

squilf has a moment where she's like "i'm not ready for this but you are my whole world

cool.

anyway, daisy has this line that i like:

But Leafpool's young, and she's not a queen. I understand.

she's talking to squilf and is kind of..."i'm here for you."

the implication is that leafpool's job doesn't really extend to kits, past their physical well-being.

and later on, daisy (and ferncloud) are the cats squilf leans on. she's the one who provides a lot of support over jaykit, especially when they're all arguing all the time about it.

she's also a support to the kits. they would all die for her.

daisy gives advice about how well jaykit is growing and reassures squilf it's okay to be kind of bored when they're little and sleeping all the time.

she also has this moment:

"Oh, hush," Daisy said, "I'm just proud she knows so many words."

where hollykit says bb curse and daisy is like "ah yes my daughter! she's so smart!"

anyway, daisy is just...

when hollypaw doesn't know what she wants, she's going to ask daisy for advice. she's a neutral party: squirrelflight is her mother, but daisy is in a not-quite-mother role.

she's the one who notices when leafpool is With Kits. that's her job.

she really does take it as a failure that she didn't notice what was going on with squilf. in the clan, her role is to stop that from happening. i mean, no one really blames her because squilf's kits were early and leafpool was there but...it was 100% her job to not have that happen.

if something had gone wrong, she would have taken it even harder.

(also, ferncloud usually also serves this role, but she has her own litter right now, so that's consuming a fair amount of her time/energy.)

kinship (kind of)

okay, well.

i've been talking about kinship more and more lately.

it's because i'm working on "wing & feather" (aka the jaywing au where dove and jay are siblings), and kinship is a somewhat big deal there.

so anyway, first: my usual preemptive vocabulary lesson:

sraue

litter, littermates.

maach

blood-family unit, sibling (by blood)

maara

den-family unit, denmates (going over this another time)

rru

mother, mother's sister.

rruha

denmother (queen who nursed at same time, or nursery queen)

there, not so bad.

right, so i'm doing a full breakdown of kinship elsewhere, because while the maach side is fairly simple, the maara side is...there are just different rules. they're not more complicated, but they're a second set of rules.

(and then you can have situations where, say, in w&f, by maach, jay and dove are maach with squilf and leaf, but by maara, squilf is rruha to them.)

see so it's complicated.

but we're honing in on rruha for this.

rruha is a term referring basically to any queen who could have nursed you.

using ashes, daisy, ferncloud, and squilf as an example:

if squilf's milk didn't come in (as per canon), fern would have nursed HJL, so ferncloud is rruha to them. (she's also got a maach relationship, but rruha supersedes that.)

similarly, squilf could have nursed fox and ice, so she's rruha to them. (unlike with HJL, she doesn't have a maach relationship to them, because she's not related to ferncloud. the more you know.)

daisy could have nursed either litter (hypothetically? it's a little complicated and the cat bio section is later on), so she's rruha to both.

this relationship is one of the highest ones on the influence later. the maternal relationship (rru) is the only clear trump card. the paternal relationship (seya) can be more important, but it depends on the father.

(the littermate and denmate relationships are also very important, but in a different way.)

so, daisy is somewhere between a grandmother and a mother to pretty much every cat in thunderclan.

god bless you if you ever try to hurt her, because that's a lot of cats who would not let that happen.

queens

alright, so. the crux of it all.

what is the role of a (life-long) queen?

to nurture queens and kits.

it's that simple.

it's just a very important job.

i imagine they train each other, too. goldenflower offered advice and teachings to ferncloud, and ferncloud brought experience of clan life to daisy, and vice versa.

i hope someone takes up residence of the nursery with daisy, because otherwise that's a lot of leadership to just break up.

(as an aside, seriously, this is out of nowhere: i'm still thinking about moonflower's death. it has to be the saddest death in warriors, for me. i think because she's such a mother figure: soft and hazy and kind, and she dies. and she's...you know, you barely thought of her as a warrior. bluepaw still sees her only as mother and then she dies, dies in a raid that you know was questionable, and it hurts so much. moonflower might be the only warriors death i cried over. because it pulled at this raw, primal place of grief and loss.)

cat biology (naturally)

you know, i made this header, but i don't actually remember what i had to say?

huh.

well. there's a nonzero chance i remember later so...

yep remembered.

okay so y'all know. i have fucked over my google for you searching info about cat lactation.

someone better care about this.

okay so.

best i can tell, cats will lactate with kits around, pregnant or not. it helps to be around pregnant queens, but a cat like daisy should have no trouble providing milk for kits where necessary.

now, based on what i know about this (which is more than i want to talk about lest someone accuse me of...eh yeah), this won't be perfect for newborn kits, but it'll keep them alive.

the problem is it's not necessarily going to be instant.

what i'm saying is, the troubles in daisy's kin are valid, considering the nursery is empty.

the long night

okay so i've talked about the long night/"whatever is done only by me" enough and i don't feel like explaining it again.

but basically, it's daisy's job to stop that from happening.

daisy (again, using daisy as a filler for "queens like daisy") is supposed to check in on queens, make sure they're safe, support them.

she will drop kick anyone out of the nursery who threatens that.

and you don't want to mess with daisy because it won't be one drop kick so much as the entirety of the junior warriors.

this is the most important part of daisy's job. crisis de-escalation. tree has nothing on queens.

notes and touches

uh, let's see...oh fuck! going to edit something.

okay anyway.

i'm very sad they let daisy sleep alone in the nursery D:

cats are highly social she didn't deserve that

[themissinglynx]

Let’s Worldbuild a Warriors AU - What’s in a Name

Within the Clans of the Vale, names carry great significance. They’re used to quickly identify key aspects of a felid’s identity such as appearance, personality or skillset, homeland, and rank within the clan.

History

The felids who lived in the Vale before the Gray Family’s arrival had a general unspoken rule when it came to naming their children, name according to color. However, this was not always the case, as with two kittens the Gray Family met named Birch and Alder.

The origin of the two-part name came from the Gray Family, who came from a culture with fanciful names such as Quickwater, Sunshadow, and Graywing. Occasionally a felid would be named after their color, but not often.

The blend of these two traditions produced the two-part naming system. Kittens were named according to their appearance (a red kitten named Fire, a black kitten named Rook, and a tortoiseshell named Dapple). Originally, suffixes had no meaning and it was generally “anything goes”. Fire-eyes, Rookflight, and Dapplepelt, while seemingly normal names to onlookers, would be seen as odd and unfitting names to descendants of the Vale.

As the ages went on, gaining the second part of one’s name was used as a rite of passage, reserved for adults and accepted members of clan life. Leaders and deputies began using certain suffixes to quietly mean certain things. “Snow is pretty quick on her feet, so her name is Snowbreeze.” It soon became common practice that the suffix was to be symbolic of a felid’s skill, personality, or general competence. Just after the written word was invented, suffixes became somewhat standardized. Clans and deputies still had their own personal flourishes, such as the case with Thunderclan using -thorn as a substitute for “skilled fighter” and with Riverclan’s use of -song to replace -throat.

Upon the Fall of Skyclan, Cloudpath the Crownless forged the Vanguard, a training regime taught by skilled monster slayers for the purposes of teaching felids how to adequately handle monsters so another clan doesn’t fall. Only felids who’ve already earned their full name are permitted to join as to not endanger apprentices. Upon the first fireteam’s graduation from the regime, a new usage came to old, discarded suffixes and suffix system was re-standardized. Upon becoming adults, a felid would gain a body part suffix, such as -tail for agility or -heart for a strong moral code. Upon graduating the Vanguard, a felid would gain a more metaphorical name, like -bark and -rock for those same meanings.

Warrior and guardian names do not correlate. “Adderfang” does not mean “has fangs like an adder”, but instead means “dark brown tabby warrior with a temper”. Likewise, “Sandstorm“ and “Lionblaze” both mean “cream guardian with a temper”. The only exception is names based on life-threatening injuries, such as “Halftail”, “Tornear”, or “Crookedjaw”.

Prefixes

The Vale is a vague temperate/subtropical forest region, including flora and fauna from Eastern America, Central Europe, South Island New Zealand, Eastern China, and Japan. Any given animal or plant that can be found in those regions can be found there or in the surrounding area.

Some prefixes can have multiple meanings, as is the case with Dandelion-. It can be given to gold felids in reference to the flower and to white felids in reference to the fluff. Another example is the prefix Fox-, which can mean “a red felid with a white belly” in reference to the red fox, or can mean “a dilute tortoiseshell” in reference to the gray fox. Some names imply pattern, like Birch- means a gray tabby and other tree prefixes. Mothers prefer to not name their kittens after “filthy” bugs, such as mosquitoes, flies, and the like, but will name them after butterflies, spiders, bees, and others.

Prefixes that are too broad of a category such as Flower-, Bark-, and Bird- are not used. Words used in biomes such as Lake-, Meadow-, River-, or Marsh- are also not used because it’s a biome, not a plant or animal that can be boiled down into a simple color or two. Things that don’t have a color or change color too often are not used, such as Sky-, Wind-, Ripple-, Thunder-, and Breeze-.

The prefixes Sun-, Moon-, Star-, and Shadow- are not used due to the first three being sacred and the last one the name of a clan, which would be considered rude.

Names of abstract concepts such as Brave-, Quiet-, and Kind- are not acceptable as they do not have a color and will often be rebelled against by the kitten in question.

Suffixes

The role of the suffix is to identify a felid’s rank and individuality. A felid earns their suffix through their own merit and not being named after another. Suffixes come in three tiers: skill, personality, and appearance.

Skill suffixes are the highest tier and are given the highest priority. Felids with this suffix are normally specialists and don’t venture too far from the roles their skill makes easy.

-claw: A felid skilled in fighting. Felids with this suffix are usually large and burly, but can sometimes be brilliant strategists. They normally escort weaker members of society from settlement to settlement, such as young mothers, kittens, elders, shamans, and healers with their sick. -claw felids are the ones most likely to join the Vanguard. It’s unusual to see an older felid who hasn’t joined the Vanguard. Guardians with this suffix are named -thorn, -briar, -burr, -rose, and -thistle.

-foot: A particularly swift felid. Felids with this suffix are usually lean and muscled in the legs. Many -foot felids become messengers for inter-clan communications. Guardians with this suffix are named -breeze, -dust, or -bolt.

-leg: A felid strong at swimming. Felids with this suffix normally have strong limbs and carry a bit of fat on their bodies. An overwhelming majority of -leg felids are from Riverclan, but some Shadowclan felids gain it from time to time. Guardians with this suffix are named -water, -brook, -stream, and -creek.

-maw: A shaman skilled in hearing the voices of the gods. This suffix is sparse among shamans, but it does spring up every couple of generations. Shamans with -maw are highly revered by the spiritual or judged with contempt by the skeptical. Guardians with this suffix are named -feather and -light.

-nose: A felid skilled in tracking. Felids with this suffix are normally hunters, trappers, foragers, and those sent to find little Dawnkit who ran off a few hours ago. They tend to be very detail-oriented and often wear clothes with fanciful embroidery. Guardians with this suffix are named -shade or -ivy.

-tail: A felid with great agility or dexterity. Felids with this suffix have a similar body structure to -foot felids, but are generally smaller. -tail felids normally are messengers, hunters, or trailblazers. Guardians with this suffix are named -bark or -branch.

-throat: A felid skilled in the art of the voice. This suffix can be given to bards, diplomats, linguists, storytellers, or just those who are well-spoken. -throat felids are often revered for their wisdom and knowledge and those who earned it for their diplomacy skills often become captain or leader of their clan. Guardians with this suffix are named -voice or -song.

-tongue: A felid skilled in healing and medicinery. Felids with this suffix tend to be one of two personality types: sweet and optimistic, or the most brutally honest personality you’d ever met. There is no in-between. Guardians with this suffix are named -root, -leaf, or -berry.

-whisker: A prudent hunter. Felids with this suffix are much like -nose felids, but tend to be more simple and pragmatic. They are almost always hunters, but some become herdsmen. Guardians with this suffix are named -dawn and -dusk.

Personality suffixes comprise of the second tier. Felids in this category tend to have a wider range of roles in society, but some of them give them an inclination to narrower roles.

-back: A felid skilled in teaching apprentices and older kittens. These felids are normally no-nonsense and thrive in the teaching of young minds. Older kittens, apprentices, and young warriors heed their words and instructions. Kittens who may be difficult apprentices will often be given to -back felids as mentors. Guardians with this suffix are named -stone or -rain.

-belly: A felid with a nurturing personality. It’s essentially the younger version of -back and mollies tend to earn this suffix more often than toms. -belly felids can be dismissed as being soft baby-makers, but those who dismiss them tend to forget about the rage of a mother ursa. Most -belly felids will take to domestic services, spinning thread, weaving blankets or baskets, looking after the kittens of the settlement and teaching them life lessons. The role of laying the groundwork for a kitten’s life is integral to any society, one that -belly is meant to honor. Guardians with this suffix are named -flower or -moss.

-fang: A felid with a turbulent disposition that tends to mellow out over the years. These felids are full of energy in their youth and are often easily pissed off, mostly because of their impatience. They tend to be great motivators, if only because that means they’ll finally shut up about the lost sheep or why don’t the leaders kiss and make up already or why can’t Pebblepaw get the goshdang maneuver right it’s so simple! However, as the years pass, their temperament will calm down. It’s nothing like a -pad felid’s calmness, but it’s a welcome one nonetheless. They tend to do a lot of jobs in society, everything from messengers to hunters to cotton seed pickers. A lot of them find the hated job somewhat calming, probably because they’re sent to do it so often. Guardians with this suffix are named -storm or -blaze.

-flank: An optimistic felid with a comforting disposition. Morale has to stay up and these felids are generally the ones to do so. They like pranks and puns and silly stories, but also seem to know the right words to say to a grieving felid. -flank felids take up many roles in society, it wouldn’t do justice to list them all here. Guardians with this suffix are named -shine or -blossom.

-heart: A felid with a strong moral code and/or sense of justice. These felids are much like -fang felids in that they tend to be great motivators, but alternatively, they can be great deputies, captains, and leaders. -heart felids tend to be very outspoken and confident in themselves and are very popular choices in leadership roles, for better or worse. Guardians with this suffix are named -spark or -rock.

-pad: A patient, calm, and gentle felid. These felids tend to be rather emotionally stable compared to others. When they show strong negative emotions, it’s telling that something genuinely is wrong and action must be taken soon. They tend to make friends easily, even in other clans. -pad felids can be good babysitters or substitute mentors, while others like the company of animals like sheep, goats, or rabbits. Guardians with this suffix are named -cloud, -frost, or -mist.

Appearance suffixes comprise of the third tier. These are for felids who are now adults, but don’t show any skills or personality that a suffix may cover. Many of these can be jack-of-all-trades sorts and fulfill many jobs throughout clan life. Instead of organizing alphabetically, I’ll organize by priority.

-face: A particularly beautiful or handsome felid or one who models the clan ideal. It’s essentially a more flattering -fur or -pelt. -face felids don’t normally become guardians, so the less than a handful of times a -face guardian has graduated, they were named -soul, much to the disdain of other felids.

-stripe: A tabby with distinct stripes. Will be ignored in favor of -fur or -pelt if the prefix already alludes to this (such as Oak-). Guardians with this suffix are named -fern or -grass.

-spot: A spotted felid. Can refer to spotted tabbies or white cats with spots of other colors in their fur. Will be ignored in favor of -fur or -pelt if the prefix already alludes to this (such as Lynx-). Guardians with this suffix are named -dew.

-speck: A speckled felid. Is much like -spot, but has smaller spots. Will be ignored in favor of -fur or -pelt if the prefix already alludes to this (such as Sparrow-). Guardians with this suffix are named -flake.

-patch: A white felid with patches of another color. Will be ignored in favor of -fur or -pelt if the prefix already alludes to this (such as Swift-). Guardians with this suffix are named -puddle.

-fur: A competent longhaired adult. Guardians with this suffix are named -tuft.

-pelt: A competent shorthaired adult. Guardians with this suffix are named -coat.

All the suffixes mentioned here neatly fit into the “other” category. (Note felids age differently than humans do, so some ages will be skewed.)

-kit: A member of the clan under ten years old. They’re not allowed outside of their settlement without adult supervision. Older kittens commonly assist with domestic life, but still have plenty of time to be kids. Once they turn eight, they occasionally sleep with the apprentices to get used to being away from their parents or guardians.

-paw: A member of the clan between ten and fifteen years old. They all sleep in a single hut in their settlement. Generally, they’re not allowed outside the settlement without adult supervision. Before becoming a warrior, the deputy will assign them a task, be it organizing and leading a patrol on their own, sparring with a -claw or the deputy, escorting the shamans on their daily tasks, or simply doing domestic work.

-path: The leader of a clan. Leaders are most commonly the previous captain of the clan, and captains a former deputy. Most leaders are respected for their charisma, wisdom, and diligence. Many of them have spouses and families of their own, but all of them have mentored at least one apprentice. A leader does not have the gift of nine lives, but one would be rightly mistaken if one were to read their literature.

-spirit: A kitten or apprentice who died. This is tied to a religious belief that the gods will only bring warriors into Starclan. Upon a body’s (or whatever scraps of a corpse they can find) cremation, the shaman renames the kitten or apprentice -spirit as the flames consume the dead.

-ear, -eye, -face, -foot, -jaw, -pelt, -tail: The most common suffixes of renames. If an apprentice or warrior survives a life-threatening injury, they’re given the choice to take on a name that fits their new description, like Tatteredpelt or Clawedface. No one’s pressured to do it, but due to the aforementioned religious belief, apprentices are a little more fussed over if they qualify for a rename. Their injuries are nothing to be shamed about, but instead are a celebration of the felid’s survival.

Other Notes

Normally, felids don’t name their kids after others as to not strip their child’s individuality and in the early days, there was a tradition of no repeated prefixes within the clan as to not cause confusion. However, since clans have gotten much larger than forty felids per clan, this tradition is largely ignored. If there happen to be two felids from different clans with the same name, say, Robinpelt, they’ll introduce themselves as, “Robinpelt of Windclan”. If there are two felids from the same clan, they’ll use the name of their location or their occupation as part of their name, “Robinpelt of Hollow Village” or “Robinpelt the Smith”. Sometimes, if married to someone important, their title will evoke the name of their spouse, “Robinpelt, Wife/Husband to Darkpath”.

By the time an apprentice nears their graduation, they have a good idea as to what their warrior name will be. Warrior ceremonies are performed by the local deputy and sometimes the captain. Shamans perform the ceremonies for their own apprentices and for new leaders. Leaders perform ceremonies for new guardians.

In the Tongue of the Vale, there are two spellings for words a felid can be named after: one for being used as a name (the old words) and the other referring to the actual plant, animal, color, element, etc (the evolved words). Most are pronounced the same, but words used for names are spelled conservatively with old spellings. An example using our own language is as the following:

“Wait, so you’re saying that I have to spell my name ‘Aakclwu’, even though we don’t say it like that anymore, even though my name is ‘Oakclaw’? That tree over there is spelled O-A-K, this thing on my finger is spelled C-L-A-W. Why is my name spelled ‘Aakclwu’??”

Linguists and scribes are trying to update the language to be more user-friendly, such as scrapping conservative spellings in favor of the evolved words and updating words that evolved from consonant and vowel shifts. Shadow and Thunderclan, as a whole, don’t really like this, but Riverclan is quite pleased about the update.

[mallowstep]

So with your seer AU do the chosen seer kits leave for there new clan as soon as there found or do they waight until there Apprentices seramony before leaving???

they actually stay with their birth clan for a year.

if they were raised in their destination clan, they would still have kin ties there, defeating the purpose. and they do the first part of their apprenticeship within their birth clan.

this is the part that covers medicinery: it's also a bit of a trial. the clans wouldn't talk about this part, but they do (sometimes) choose the wrong kit, and it's usually pretty quick into the learning herbs part of training that they can figure it out.

then, at one year old, around when their littermates are getting their warrior names, they go to the other clan.

basically, the point of them leaving is (a) because seers aren't supposed to have kin ties, and (b) to strengthen unity between the clans.

(a) just means the seers have to leave sometime around six moons to a year, when they're old enough to have an established family bond, because they won't make another, and they're old enough they don't need to be socialized.

(b) has them staying in their birth clan quite a bit longer. even if it was possible to get a seer to truly forget their kinship ties, their littermates wouldn't, and it means clans are predisposed to find peaceful solutions.

this doesn't always work, of course, it's still battle cats, but it's a bit of the-thought-that-counts.

a seer like goosefeather saying they need to raid windclan is, uh, problematic

[themissinglynx]

Alright, here’s two more cats from the AU which I have still not named. (Monstrous? Idk...) Not much has changed in the way of their appearances and names, but I have changed their histories somewhat.

Firstly, we have Stormtail, an ordinary blue tom. His blue is a darker shade, so here we are. His genotype would be o (no red) - BB (black) - dd (diluted) - aa (no tabby markings) - TmTm (mackerel tabby) - ww (no white) - CC (normal color) - Ll (short fur). I forgot to add fur length to the others, so both Goose and Cloud have ll (long fur) as their genotype. Anywho, Stormtail is a very dark cat, so I gave him amber eyes to reflect this. His nose is also a dark gray color. For the uninformed, eye and nose colors aren’t genetic; they’re affected by the color of the fur around them. Eye colors are a sliding scale of shades whereas specific pelt colors have nose/paw pad colors attached to them.

I worked somewhat backwards with Stormtail’s physical design. Among traditionalists, the -tail suffix indicates a cat who is exceptionally agile and/or dexterous. Cats who have this suffix will normally be very lean and could be considered attractive, so that influenced his lean, fit body type. Stormtail is a pretty good runner for those who live in his clan (there’s not much room to sprint), and he was pretty close to getting the -foot suffix, but ended up with -tail, as both worked well for him.

After receiving his warrior name, he became a messenger. He’s normally running from clan settlement to clan settlement relaying messages for local deputies and occasionally the captain. He married Cloudbelly not long after she earned her warrior name and fathered Bluekit, but he learned pretty quickly he wasn’t cut out for a domestic life. After Bluepaw’s apprenticeship, he divorced his wife and relocated to another settlement, trying to avoid his former settlement on all his message runs as possible. It wasn’t until he learned that Bluefur had joined the Guard that he started taking an interest in her life. However, she wanted no part of it. Stormtail couldn’t blame her. He was proud of her when she graduated, but all he could do was watch her from a distance. He watched Bluetuft bear his grandchildren, take on an apprentice, and bury her mother, half-sister, and child. Stormtail was there for the last one though. He eventually met his end when a monster attacked him as he delivered a message from his clan to a rivaling clan.

As our first second generation cat, Bluestar gets traits from her parents instead of pulled from the aether. Her genotype is as follows: oo (no red) - BB (black) - dd (diluted) - aa (no tabby markings) - TmTm (mackerel) - Ww (some white*) - Ccs (normal color) - ll (long fur). Because her lighter shade of gray, she’s got green eyes, which is on the lighter side of the eye color spectrum. The only way she’d get blue eyes is if she had so much white, she would probably be deaf. Her nose is also gray.

Bluekit started off with a rough life. While her mother was loving, her father grew more and more distant until his aforementioned abandoning. She was apprenticed to Stonepelt, who trained her well. In her formative years, she loved the stories of wardens who protected their clans from the monsters, and resolved to become one after she became a warrior. When Goldenthorn (Sunfall) returned from the Guard, she wasn’t sure about gaining him as a father, especially since her own father abandoned her. She didn’t know what to think of her new half-sister either. As she was finishing up her warrior training, a young apprentice admired her drive to protect the clan and wanted to do the same. This apprentice was Thistlepaw.

Bluefur joined the Guard days after her warrior ceremony and joined in a team consisting of a warrior who learned medicinery**, Murkfang (Yellowfang), and a less respected warrior, Alderpelt (Crookedjaw). During her training, Bluefur fell in love with Alderpelt’s brother, Oakclaw (Oakheart). After graduation, Bluetuft and Oakthorn started a secret relationship, resulting in the births of Mistkit and Stonekit. Bluetuft’s settlement was a little uneasy about the little bastards, but thankfully, no one figured out... too quickly. By the time Mistpaw and Stonepaw were apprenticed, she became the deputy of her settlement, despite the now common knowledge of her affair (although they weren’t entirely sure who it was with). Her step-father was still the captain with Pinestar as the leader, but with the old leader growing senile and Goldenthorn getting up there in years, deputies across the clan were itching for the leader and captain’s approval. Bluetuft was chosen. In the time waiting, she bore another child, Pebblekit (Mosskit). In a terrible monster attack, Cloudbelly, Snowfur, and Pebblekit died, placing the young deputy under extreme grief. She broke off the affair with Oakthorn, who understood, but was heartbroken. She focused her emotions on raising her nephew, Whitekit.

Upon Pinestar’s death and Goldenthorn’s retirement, Bluestar became the leader of her clan. She took in two outsiders, Rust and Rose, and made fine warriors out of them, despite all odds. After Tigerclaw’s betrayal and subsequent execution, Bluestar fell into a deep depression. What didn’t help was one of her clanmates repeated the same infraction she committed and got caught as soon as the children were born. To her, the world was falling apart. She died not long afterward of a stress-induced sickness, no longer the proud young warden as shown here, but a sickly crone barely able to stand or talk. Her captain, Eveningflower (Goldenflower), took up the role everyone knew needed replacing... Not all lives go out gracefully.

*Ww means a cat who has less than 50% white on their bodies. Bluestar has a little speck on her chest which is covered by her tunic.

**She was affectionately called “The Combat Medic”.