A silky-furred cat smelling of cedar smoke stalks the trees giving way to tall grasses and wildflowers. The dying sun twinkles in his eyes; his dark eyes narrow to slits in response. The Grand Herd grazes, ruddy-backed fawns frolicking after damselflies, their mothers chatting idly about their spring, the young stags patrolling the meadow to assure the does of their safety. On the brow of a hillock, framed by Horoa’s tired reddened eye, stands the Thousand-Crowned Lord of the Wood, Grand Hart Braveheart Gloryson, called by his closest companions the matronym “Mossyhorn”.

This is the one the cat had been looking for. He trots towards the nearest stag-scout with his plumy tail held high.

“Beg pardon,” he trills in Cud-talk. When the stag-scout acknowledges the cat, he asks, “I wish to speak with the Grand Hart. I’ve heard tell he’s a scholar and I wish to exchange stories.”

The stag-scout—now joined by two of his brethren, bored from yet another dusk of no thunderstick shrieks—trots back to his lord to request the audience.

The cat is accepted and escorted by the stag-scout who’d found him to the hillock, and after he entertained the Grand Hart, his companions, and the eavesdropping does and bucks with a series of badger tales of the mundane hijinxs featuring a boar and a sow with a thousand children in their labyrinthine sett, the Grand Hart tells him his requested knowledge.

Great cats from the Storm-Cat Clan.

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Leafstorm

There is a piece of land that two of these Clans have fought over for generations. Sunningrocks, I believe it is called. I assume there is much there of great value, if it’s right to endlessly battle for it. And one of the Storm-Cat Clan’s legendary figures was a female—their own version of a grand hart, if you can believe it—who was there when the Great-Antlered Elks recarved the path of the river dividing the Storm-Cat Clan from the River-Cat Clan.

This was before the Clans of the Vale gave their grand cat honorary titles as part of their name. Those that hear of her today would likely call her Leafstar out of respect (though I thought they placed great importance on getting a name right, but that’s a cat for you). Even through all this time, all these generations and cultural changes and severe events, not one grand cat has held on to Sunningrocks as long as Leafstorm did. To her credit, indeed, she lived long enough that she would have been retired by force, and up ‘til her death, the River-Cat Clan could not sink their claws into the earth and hold on.

I heard once that her second-in-command lost Sunningrocks fairly quickly once they became grand cat. This fails to surprise me. Hardly ever does an added second part of a story end well.

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Maplestar

Topically, I believe there was once a great to-do over who succeeded a grand cat in the early eras of the Clans of the Vale. Some had their children succeed them, others were voted in by the entire colony… there was no pattern or law dictating what was to happen when a grand cat died. This cat changed that.

She was the second-cat (how would one say second-stag? And of a female!), and the only one she bowed to faded away from age—a lucky being, if ever there was one in this world of death. His son tried to claim his place, citing their blood-connection as proof of his right (his hallowed right, of course) for the position. Maplestar (as she would come to be known) stepped up to the son’s challenge, and through a brief civil war won her crown and became grand cat. It helped that—bafflingly—the majority of the Storm-Cat Clan approved of her much more than they did her opponent. She was the one to declare after this war, with the approval of the other grand cats of the Clans, that the second-cat would be the one to turn to once the place for grand cat was open. Fortunate that the other Clans were leaning towards this rule as well, after their own bouts of confusion and infighting.

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Prickleface

A god-caller exists in every species, it appears, and so I shall tell you of an unusual one that came to live with the Storm-Cat Clan. Her strangeness came from her blood and soul originating in a place far away from the Clans of the Vale, and from her fur that spiked and bristled on every part of her body, especially her face, no matter how clean or dirty she was. Perhaps your feline gods do not mind a little prickliness. I know I would be embarrassed to approach them looking like a burr with legs.

Just before the time of rules to feline names began, Prickleface came from lands the Clans have since forgotten, declaring that it was her destiny to join the forest and speak with their ancestors. She was to guide her fellows on the righteous path, in a safe and sensible direction. She was ignored for the moment, though she was granted entrance into the Storm-Cat Clan. Their own god-caller, their seer of the stars, was the first to see her potential, and took her on as his apprentice. Very soon after, Prickleface called forth a vision that saved her Clan from an intense disaster that would have destroyed their home, and she was honored thereafter.

What was the disaster? Thunders if I know. They who told me this story were less than direct about that.

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Lionstar

Ah, a respectable one. I have heard of the backwards ways of these Vale cats before—you take one mate over the course of your entire life, and only bear one bout of young. And you even let other males hang around and take one of your females for their own! Foolish, if you ask me. At least this one knew what it means to be a grand hart.

Lionstar’s legacy—a truly noble one—is of his numerable mates over the course of his life. Two or three from his own Clan, one from a neighboring Clan, and while those went on, he danced with a female that lived in the territory of the humans near his forest. The number has gone up and down, from the versions I’ve heard, of course, but it never seems to be as high as it should be. He’d make a good stag of a modest herd, were he one of us; certainly his feline followers didn’t appreciate it.

“Important to keep family trees easy to follow,” you say. Hah! Why do you not simply shoo the other males away, then? It’s very easy when you know who the father of all your fawns are! This Lionstar would have known that better than anyone.

GRAY WING

“When the holly leaf is eaten by deer, the round leaves grow back bristling. Likewise should the wise leader’s losses grow into strength. The fool leader laments the damaged Clan and never rebuilds.” —Clan Upkeep in Proverbs for a Leader, accredited to Gray Wing

Sometimes considered the Crone’s fifth disciple and the true first leader of WindClan, Gray Wing was considered by many an excellent choice for the Crone’s successor to the Moorland. The epics say he was Clear Sky’s brother, and while he was far less outwardly cruel than him, he still had his fair share of controversies to dispute past his death. For one, his relationships with kittypets were usually rocky, even so far as to suggest an abused kittypet return to her humans and unsavory living conditions. His relationships with Dewdrop and River Ripple were noted to be rather terse.

Despite his opinions on kittypets, he was an affectionate mate and caring father. Unfortunately most of the segments on Gray Wing’s family life are forgotten by the Clans, but snippets of them appear in the standard recitals of the Epic of the Crone's Lands. He had at least one litter he sired himself, but he was also known to be a father figure to multiple other litters. 

As for his leadership position, Gray Wing was remembered as a cunning tactician, utilizing his cats’ skills, pelt colors, the weather, and the terrain in his strategies. Most of the wisdoms about battle tactics in Proverbs for a Leader are accredited to him, much to the embarrassment of ThunderClan. Some cats say that when a cat is named -wing, it’s in reference to Gray Wing, but this is not the case.

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DUSTY

“The fox and badger should bother you no longer, dear old friend. The Untamed One sends her regards, but it is clear that an Untamed like her and we snow-stained cannot get along. Perhaps one day when our Grandmother has swallowed our bones, our kittens' kittens and her kittens' kittens shall frolick under the Eyes of the Crows. Oh how I wish to see that day for myself.” —Dusty, from the Dawn section of the Epic of the Crone’s Lands

Before the Crone’s arrival, cats were divided into two categories: rogues like Brawn and Slash who used their superior strength to enforce their fickle will onto their fellow cats, and the cats they pushed around. However, most scholars propose there was a third category: cats who used their cunning to evade the rogues’ efforts to subdue them. Dusty was one of these in the proposed third category, as few rogues would dare cross a cat who can call on other beasts to defend them.

This cat never featured in the Epic of the First Clan, but the Crone often made passing remarks of asking “the polyglot barn cat” to ask a trespassing badger or fox to leave. The jack's proper arrival to the Clans came after the Crone’s death, whereupon Dusty joined WindClan and eventually became respected enough for Gray Wing to offer deputyship. Back then, every Clan encouraged learning to speak Fang, but as time wore on, only the Moorlanders’ descendants still actively teach it, all thanks to a polyglot jack.

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MOTH FLIGHT

There were many wonders and horrors she saw. A rabbit of starlight and his shadow in the moon. A lamb and a wolf that were neither lamb nor wolf. A bog in the lands where the sun sleeps. The dark. The long dark. The first spark of fire and the last breath of wind. The embrace of our Grandmother. —From the Nightfall section of the Epic of the Crone’s Lands

Considering their history, no one would have anticipated the ancestor of WindClan to produce the cat to discover the Mother. It is uncertain if she was born to the Pilgrims or to a local queen and took on a Pilgrim’s name later in life. What is certain is her strange behavior that led her to wander the moorlands like a stain of moonlight, foregoing hunting in favor of naming every bug that she came across.

Her story says that as a nameless kitten, she followed a strange moth with wings of different colors who whispered poems of the future. The moth protected her from the eyes of sparrowhawks and the noses of foxes, all the way to Highstones. Upon finding the Mother’s Maw, the moth perched on the kitten’s head, urging her to delve into the ancient secrets of the world. Led by her heart and guided by her whiskers, the kitten found the Moonstone, illuminated by the full moon. Exhausted from her journey, she slept there, dreaming of uncountable and indescribable things to the mind of any breathing being, even humans.

BRAWN

    “I am not bright like my brother Ripple, nor am I shrewd like Clear Sky or pure of heart like Dewdrop. I often drive my teacher to fury, but for whatever gods out there that blessed me with my claws and my spirit, I shan’t disappoint them and let them go to waste.”                     —Brawn, the Daybreak section of the Epic of the First Clan

Son of the Storm, Chief of the Wood, and founder of what would become ThunderClan, Brawn could’ve been considered something of a leader to the cats within the Forest, albeit more like a benevolent boss to a band of strays than a true StarClan-blessed leader. Orphaned at a young age, having lost his littermates to a tyrannical seer-like cat, he carved a name for himself with his blood-siblings Ember and Dart and established something resembling order amidst the chaos of those early days before the Crone.

The fact that he agreed to come under her tutelage apparently surprised many; the fact that he remained her faithful disciple and managed to come out of it a great leader shocked all. Upon carving out his territory in the Woodlands, he named his blood-sister Ember his deputy, citing her cunning and cool nature as the best counterbalance to his turbulent demeanor.

His appearance, though forgotten and disputed, was said to fit his epithet “Son of the Storm”, but he was described to be quite handsome and set the bar for ThunderClan beauty standards. In most retellings, he’s said to be dark like the angry storms or red like the sky before then, but regardless of the color of his pelt, he was massive, large-pawed, and had the face of a great cat.

Sadly to the cats of modern ThunderClan, his resting ground is forgotten. Most hope he was laid to rest with his blood-siblings in Hero’s Grove, though most cynical elders bet his body was fed to the buzzards.

-

EMBER

    “Hear yourself, Brawn! You mewl like a newborn kit complaining of her mother’s absence! You’re stronger than that and you know it! Now cease your lamenting, for you have myself and Dart by your sides, and we will not see you fail. Gods know I shan’t allow it.”                     —Ember, the Dawn section of the Epic of the First Clan

Noteworthy not just because of her position as the first deputy of ThunderClan—or the Woodlanders, as modern Clan cats call it—Ember’s name became legendary for her ingenuity and empathy. In the aftermath of a pointless battle that ended the lives of many young cats, it was she who heard the grieving queens’ cries and she who established the laws so no queen would have to suffer as they did.

Some say she became a mother herself and that her blood runs in ThunderClan to this day, others say she was too dedicated to her tasks to make time for a litter, and yet others—mostly RiverClan—say she had no interest in rearing kittens of her own, that her empathy for her fellow mollies was what drove her actions. Regardless, she holds up to this day as the greatest deputy the Clans have seen.

Rumors have it she was born as the bastard kitten of a kittypet, but her blood-brothers’ efforts to dispel that rumor leave some to believe it was a sore truth they wished to hide or a noble stand against slander of their blood-sister. Even her appearance is disputed, either as a dark tortoiseshell paired with Brawn’s ginger or a dark gray tortoiseshell to fit her epithet “Storm-Sister”. Her cause of death, sadly, is forgotten.

-

DART

    “It was fate that brought us together, my dear blood-siblings, and nothing shall drive us apart. I swear by the stars and the storms that I will do my best to make this forest our home.”                     —Dart, the Dusk section of the Epic of the First Clan

While not having many achievements to his name, Dart’s importance among the founders of ThunderClan cannot be disputed. To leave him out for not holding a position of power would be like to neglect Rokhar for not having one of his eyes in the heavens. Unfortunately, due to his obscurity, his life is swathed in the most mystery of his blood-siblings.

His bond with Brawn is often emphasized in the stories recited in his name, and they’re looked back upon as the greatest friendship the Clans have ever known. With Brawn as the Thunderer, Dart was the Bolt, and his appearance is either dark stormy gray to contrast with Brawn’s bright ginger pelt or white like lightning with his gloamy gray siblings.

For a cat seeped in obscurity, his death is the most well-known of his siblings’. In the Moonrise segment of the Epic of Thunder Forest, it recounts the events of Dart’s death at the teeth of hounds in protecting Brawn’s expecting lover, Brawn and Ember’s great grieving for him, and his burial at the roots of the Great Sycamore.

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OWLSIGHT

    “Hark! Leaders of all Clans! The Forest is no place for barbarous murderers and lying lowlives! We’ve grown past that, and justice should be served for the death of Brawn’s eldest kitten. If you happen upon the tom called Splinter, show him no mercy and bring me his teeth.”                     —Owlsight, the Midday section of the Epic of Thunder Forest

No one expected such a scrawny little cat to become the successor of Brawn of all leaders, but she proved to have made an excellent choice. Before her day, ThunderClan’s battle tactics only benefited those like Brawn and ThunderClan’s typical stock—massive, well-muscled, and undauntable—while smaller, more lithe cats like herself struggled after their peers. She took the teachings of her mentor, Dart, and developed them into hunting and fighting styles more well-suited for the smaller cats of the Clan.

She certainly fit her name, the epics say, taking in the world and scrutinizing it with her large eyes. She was far more calculating than Brawn, more often condemning cats to death, yet she’s remembered as a fair and just leader, even as the first noteworthy ThunderClan cat to recognize and give prayers to Horoa.