#dungeonclan

The last words of our medcat who was bitten by a poisonous snake.

Part two: How it's Going

(to read part one of this introduction click here)

This is where I’ll give a basic, spoiler-free overview of the lore in my world and some of the choices I’ve made to combine warrior cats and dnd.

So what is DungeonClan anyway? The secret is that DungeonClan isn’t even a real clan at all. The five actual clans this story focuses on are:

PaladinClan BarbarianClan DruidClan RogueClan BardClan

I think you can see where this is going just by the clan names –and that’s what I like about it! The idea of dividing the clans into dnd classes was an idea I loved the moment I thought of it. It’s just the right combination of trope-y and on-the-nose for my liking. I can start a sentence with “PaladinClan and BarbarianClan blah blah blah,” and a casual reader can instantly understand a few things about this world with no additional context. (assuming they’re already passingly familiar with dnd and warriors)

In many ways, the clans are exactly what you’d expect them to be. I’m using a lot of tropes here, don’t expect me to reinvent the wheel or anything. To briefly go over them:

BarbarianClan:

I’ll start with BarbarianClan because they’re the most traditional warrior cats clan when compared to the books. BarbClan cats are big and unkempt and they like to prove themselves through fighting. They’ve never had much in the way of magic but the barbaric rage they channel when in battle could be argued to be a supernatural ability.

current BarbarianClan cats:

Wildthorn and Batpaw

PaladinClan

PaladinClan and BarbarianClan are historic rivals. PaladinClan cats also believe in honor through battle but they have a nasty holier-than-thou attitude about it. All the clan cats are reverent to StarClan but PaladinClan takes it to another level, believing that they draw a magical strength from pledging their loyalty to their warrior ancestors and following the code. Another note about PaladinClan: PaladinClan used to be two clans: ClericClan and PaladinClan. They merged into one clan due to having very similar ideals. Despite this merge happening generations ago, there is still a divide in PaladinClan between cats born with cleric abilities (known simply as “clerics”) and those without. Clerics can receive visions from StarClan and are exalted in PaladinClan for their heightened spiritual connection. This creates strife among the non-clerics though, since they are in many ways considered second-class citizens (pun intended) in PaladinClan.

current PaladinClan cats:

(Havendown, Sunsong, Poppypaw)

DruidClan:

DruidClan is largely pacifist, preferring to seamlessly disappear into the trees rather than to fight. This isn’t to say that they can’t handle themselves in battle, just that they would rather concern themselves with studying and observing nature rather than getting involved in petty territory disputes. No clan would dare try to take their territory anyway, as DruidClan lives at the base of the great Moonwillow, a giant tree whose roots span the territories of all the surrounding clans. The tree is the spiritual center for all the clan cats in this area, the equivalent to the Moonpool or Moonstone in canon warrior cats. DruidClan cats are the protectors of this tree, and they grant safe passage to it to any cat who needs to commune with StarClan. Attacking DruidClan on Moonwillow territory is considered a great taboo among all five clans.

current DruidClan cats:

(Dragonflytail, Orioleflight, Pinepaw)

RogueClan:

RogueClan is a bit mysterious as they are the newest clan to start living near the Moonwillow. Ever since they arrived they’ve been aggressive toward the other clans and have been raiding them for food. Tensions are high between RogueClan and the other clans. PaladinClan and BarbarianClan may be rivals but at least their history gives them a begrudging mutual respect for each other. RogueClan has none of this established standing and has a real risk of being driven off by the other clans--or going to all-out war. RogueClan cats have impressive stealth abilities that may or may not be magical in nature. Some RogueClan cats also have distinctive bioluminescent fur and the ability to conjure small lights and illusions. (they are my resident emo sparkle cats)

current RogueClan cats:

(Willowmist and Batpaw. Batpaw is BarbarianClan but he is half RogueClan)

BardClan:

BardClan is the black sheep out of all these clans. It is currently the least relevant to the story, as they are completely nomadic. They only return to the Moonwillow every so often during their travels. During times of peace and prosperity when they return the other clans will let BardClan cats stay on their territory and share their prey in return for songs and stories from the outside world. BardClan is well-liked among all the clans for this reason and though not as pacifistic as DruidClan they rarely find themselves involved in battles with the other clans.

current BardClan cats:

(Orioleflight is a BardClan cat who was too sickly as a kit to travel with BardClan so he was raised in DruidClan)

So if those are the five real clans then what is DungeonClan? To explain that I have to explain how the story begins. The five clans I described WERE the prominent clans in this world, but everything changes when the fire nation--I mean when Calamity Ganon--when a catastrophe strikes the clans. Long story short, a magical anomaly causes all the clan territories around the Moonwillow to get destroyed. Basically a big fantasy nuke.

Right when this happens nine of the clan cats are mysteriously transported into a labyrinthine dungeon. It's sprawling and strange, filled with traps, monsters, a hostile kobold population, a stranger named Magnus, and other mysteries. Corridors seem to move and change. The cats don't know what's going on or why they are sent there. Despite being from different clans they have to team up in order to survive in the dungeon. This group is what is ultimately known as DungeonClan.

As a note, I'm playing very fast and loose with the dnd concepts in this story. I also plan to ease into the magical stuff. As I hinted in the clan descriptions, the clans all have low-level magical abilities (such as rage for barbarians, sneak attack and dancing lights for rogues, divine smite and sacred oath for paladins, etc.) This is how things are going to be at first, the magic being subtle and not super powerful, the cats still mostly relying on melee attacks. Powerful magic (like shooting fireballs and stuff) is a lost art in the clans currently, but as the story goes on the characters will "level up" their magical skills as they discover more about magic in the dungeon. This is also why there's not a "WizardClan" currently or something comparable because that would be too OP at the moment compared to the other clans. As I've hinted in some of my twitter posts though, I do have plans to eventually add a WarlockClan.

This has been a basic introduction to DungeonClan! It's really just the tip of the iceberg though and I have a lot more to tell!

Part One: How it Started

DungeonClan is a warrior cats oc story (story? narrative? campaign? idk.) that I’m working on! It is set in a dnd universe with all the standard fantasy trappings like magic, monsters, dungeons, dragons, gelatinous cubes, whatever! Before I explain more specifics about what “dnd warrior cats” will mean I want to give some background on what inspired me to write this story in the first place.

It didn’t start with dnd or even warrior cats. What inspired it was 2010 deviantart oc nostalgia. Back when I was younger I used to collect ocs from those massive adoptable sheets you’d see on deviantart. Random sparkle dogs and cats that were sold for pennies. I would collect a bunch of these characters and come up with little stories for them. I didn’t care if the designs looked good together or followed any particular theme. I would just choose a pink heart wolf and a green acid one and go “Yep, these two are dating now.”

That’s the sort of energy I’m trying to rekindle with this project. I just wanted to collect a bunch of random, discordant designs and make a story for them. I did decide early on to limit it to cat designs because a warriors story was what I was most interested in making. I thought it would be fun to stick them all together and go “This is a clan now.” 

I considered buying a bunch of adoptables to populate the characters for this project like I did in the past. Thankfully though people have gotten a lot smarter about pricing their work since I was a kid. Now on average adoptables sell for an actual tangible amount of money as opposed to the lint at the bottom of someone’s pocket they sold for back then on deviantart. I’m happy about this development but at the same time, I can’t justify dropping hundreds of dollars buying tons of designs all at once. Besides, hand-picking the designs I wanted to buy might give me too much creative control. So instead I turned to art trades. I would go to my twitter followers and offer my art in exchange for some random warrior cats designs. 

This was when I had to sit down and come up with a few guidelines for what kind of kitty designs I wanted people to give me. I wanted to give them creative control but I didn’t want to leave them with absolutely nothing to go off of. Warrior cats traditionally have more natural-looking characters, but since the original inspiration for this project was literal sparkle cats I really didn’t want to limit it to just normal cats. If I was going to allow fantasy elements in the character designs, it wasn’t a far leap for me to decide to make this a dnd world. Dnd is already something I’m interested in and it’s also the perfect format to use if you’re trying to bring random oddball characters into one unified story. (Isn’t that what most dnd parties are anyway?) It also allows for weird magical fur colors and perhaps some fantasy dna to be added to the cats. 

I ultimately decided that I still wanted magic and unnatural features to be rare in my characters. At least at first,  so I could start with a more standard-feeling warriors world and then ease into the fantasy stuff. The instructions I gave my art trade victims were to “lean on the side of making a normal-looking warrior cat, but you can also add some weird and fantasy elements”. I still gave them creative freedom though and it was possible that everyone would give me a bright neon green fire breathing angel cat. I would have rolled with it if that had happened, but this would’ve turned into a different kind of story if so. Thankfully though my instructions worked as I intended and I ended up with a ratio of fantasy to non-fantasy elements that I’m super happy with. 

I did ten art trades to start with. The designs I received from these trades would play a significant role in shaping the story that was forming in my mind. With each character I received I began to think of new ideas and things I wanted to add to my world. It began going from a basic “dnd + warrior cats” idea to a real story. These are those first ten designs:

Designer credits are on my toyhouse

And here is a lineup of all of them I drew in my style:

Havendown, Sunsong, Magnus, Wildthorn, Dragonflytail, Orioleflight, Willowmist, Pinepaw, Poppypaw, Batpaw

I’ll do a proper introduction to all these characters later. By the way, If the concept of designing a character for this project intrigues you then fear not! I will need more characters as the story goes on. Some I might need sooner rather than later because though I’ve already started fleshing out the story I’ve been thinking I need more background characters to work with before I start writing. So stay tuned and I’ll be opening up more art trades to add more characters, and maybe other things as well such as designs for monsters and non-cat creatures.