#promisedlore

The following ramblings have spoilers for: Character arcs, general lore, behind the scenes stuff. If you would prefer to experience Promiseclan blind, this post is NOT for you.

Firstly, to pull back the curtain a bit, I do plan to play the file Promiseclan lives on in 12 moon intervals. This is for my own sanity’s sake. As having an idea of point A and the rough point B these cats need to be in by moon 12 makes things infinitely easier lmao.

“But what of the choices you promise!” You say.

Well, As mentioned, the save file is moreso of a *guide*.

If you get a cat severely injured//in a relationship/killed/banished never to be seen again I’ll just. Retroactively edit the file.

The wonderful thing about being a human artist is I can look at what the game file says happens vs what I believe would happen because your choices put Shadedstar in the pear wiggler and simply. Draw the latter.

Secondly, the Founder Arc of Promiseclan is very much about individual tragedies and collective hopes and determinations existing in spite of said horrors. Take that as you will.

Preamble over, here are my extended and in-depth personality notes.

Shadedstar is essentially being held together by nine rapidly fraying threads, and those threads all coincidentally share names with her fellow founders. I’ll be completely honest with you, dear readers. She’s only going to get worse. After a certain event happens to her a few moons from now, she begins to go from “I don’t know what I got into but I’m trying to stay strong and moral” to Jimmy Mouthwashing levels of delusional.

It’s very:

“I’m the hero!! Me!!! Look at what I do and give up to save the rest of you!!! Aren’t I such a martyr? Aren’t I such a good leader?”

(She is not only actively making things worse, but she is causing problems that didn’t need to happen to begin with)

Unlike Jimmy Mouthwashing, Shadedstar unfortunately has a very enabling benevolent(?) voice whispering in her ear that she’s doing a great job and everyone should love her. So when someone like Twigstripe goes “You’re delusional. Stop.” She can just turn to her spiritual yes-man and ignore the ugly truth ❤️

As an additional note: For those of you who are on the path to becoming Shadedstar enjoyers, here are my Nuance Notes you can cling to when she inevitably starts REALLY losing it:

- The Fell Star targeted her during a period of raw grief, and actively preys on doubts she has had for a looong while. Said grief is bad enough that first thing after getting loaded into the Promiseclan savefile, I went and manually gave her the lasting grief condition.

- The note in her less-spoilery personality introduction about her not sleeping much wasn’t just some “Haha funny she’s overworked” note. I draw her with perpetual eye bags for a reason. As anyone who’s been sleep deprived can tell you, you don’t exactly think straight when you’re running on low and inconsistent amounts of sleep.

- I will also say there is a HEAVY correlation between number of Founders dead and how off the rails Shaded is being. Will you see that in effect this year? Perhaps.

Anyway!! Onto Brownspot.

(I’m just going to call her Brownie. As weird as the name is out of context, her housefolk named her after the dessert and I think that’s cute.)

Brownie’s kind of a weird one? She and Fallenspeckle are the most mentally stable out of the cats who start the story as adults. Brownie’s issues are less crazy delusions and more a very unwavering “I can fix this” mentality.

Briar’s sick? She can fix this. Her former apprentice is depressed and kinda losing it after [REDACTED] happens? She can fix this. Twigstripe and Shadedstar are at each other’s throats for vague yet clearly serious reasons? She can fix this. She doesn’t know how to ask for help, and she doesn’t understand when she should back down and let things take their course.

To Shadedstar, that kinda made her a no-brainer for the deputy pick because her other options were:

- Guy who is already the doctor of the group

- Guy who is terrified of his own shadow

- Girl who could not care less about responsibility. Fuck it we ball and fuck it we find out!!

As another note:

Brownie and Twig’s dynamic is planned to ultimately be left kinda ambiguous. As Moon 0 indirectly stated, she’s been traveling around with him for a few years at least. I personally think they’re cute as a couple and would work really well together, but Twig has a lot of baggage and Brownie would rather choke on her own feelings than add to it. For now she is his best friend in the whole wide world, and that’s enough for her.

Twigstripe.. Twiggy boy.. Oh god, there’s a lot to talk about with him. Twig also suffers from crippling responsibility complex. He’s 134 moons old as of Moon 1 and is NOT getting any younger. The constant references to him flipping off Shadedstar and wanting to retire are only half a joke, because Twigstripe is TIRED. He never really got over Briar dying in the way she did for reasons. Which I’m not elaborating on now because they WILL be pretty explicitly explored in Moon 8 at the absolute latest.

He does care a lot. Brownie was right about that, those apprentices are his not-biological babies, dammit. (Conifer is both his favorite and least favorite child for. Reasons. One of which the observant reader might already be able to piece together. But we’ll get there.)

Unfortunately he’s really bad at saying he cares. Mostly because everyone he does that to. Dies. So he’ll kinda just unnervingly stare at you until you get the point instead.

Leafshimmer is the oldest of the clan’s actual warriors and is honestly just not having a good time. He’s not party rocking, his mental soundtrack at any given time is Jhariah’s “PRESSURE BOMB 3?!?!?!”. He and Shadedstar both sit on the “Keeping you all alive makes me stressed as fuck” reaction spectrum, but at opposite ends. Shaded is in a crucible, Leaf is just on fire. Save for the training he has to do with Ripplepaw, Brownie tries to keep him assigned to tasks in and around the actual camp to help his nerves. He needs a weighted blanket and some kitty weed and he’d be. More Functional than he is right now at least.

Anxiety aside, he’s actually very clever. He likes working with his paws and doing den maintenance. He also LOVES telling riddles.

(The answer to the one he poses in his personality intro is “Your Heartbeat” by the way.)

I don’t have much else to say on him besides the fact he is ALWAYS beefing with Fallenspeckle. All their relationship events seem to be stuff like “They have an argument over who gets a pretty feather and destroy it” “They disagree on something trivial” “Fallenspeckle thinks Leafshimmer is a fucking moron”. In my humble (correct) opinion, it’s moreso of a one sided beef Fallenspeckle has and Leafshimmer is just like “Waugh. Uh. Okay 👍👍”

Speaking of which. Fallenspeckle!! She is the only cat in Promiseclan who shouldn’t be in the retirement home or middle school. For a long while she was effectively the Young Cat Wrangler™️ because she could keep up with them better than the rest of the group could. Fallen.. kinda copes with all of this with a “I’m here for a good time, not a long time” mentality. She likes games, avoiding responsibility, and not thinking about the horrors ❤️

I label her and Brownie as the most stable because out of everyone, they change the least. She knows what she’s about and honestly? I support her.

Palepaw!! The oldest of the baby gang. He kinda sees himself as the de facto leader, and being Shaded’s apprentice does NOT help this mentality. Depending on how you want to look at it, him wanting to imitate Shadedstar is either very cute! (He looks up to her!) Or very scary! (Noooo little German cat!! Don’t imitate your warlock clan leader!!!) He’s very Fred Scooby Doo to me. Smart, but also a golden retriever of a guy.

I’ll say this much. Coniferpaw gets protagonist rights for a reason. She undergoes a LOOOT of change in this first year. Trauma makes a girlie grow up too fast, I’m afraid. Up until that point, she’s probably the most optimistic of the baby squad. She loves life and her clan. It would be very sad if anything happened to them. ❤️

Vinepaw Is just a sassy little lady who is too smart for her own good, and her mentor enables the hell out of that. She eventually has a very interesting dynamic with a cat I can’t talk about just yet. But know I have plans for her. She’s also one of two Promiseclan founders that can eventually canonically understand/work basic human technology. Now she just needs to figure out how to change batteries 😔

Ripplepaw. Pathetic little man. He is VERY pathetic. Super DUPER pathetic. Having Leafshimmer as a mentor doesn’t help this in the slightest since that guy has a negative backbone himself. Ripple has the worst nest in the den and usually gets stuck with Vinepaw’s chores she doesn’t want to do.

- Shadedstar originally tried to name Twigstripe Twigbriar, after his dead littermate (who will be mentioned in the next few panels) Twigstripe immediately vetoed the name and picked his own

- Brownspot picked her name in solidarity with Twigstripe after Fallenspeckle started teasing him about it being lame.

- Fallenspeckle really REALLY wanted an edgy name after learning her new role in the group was called a Warrior. Some of the names Shadedstar had to veto include:

- Speckles the Deathbringer

- BloodSpeckles, Lady of the Crimson Moon

And

- Harbinger of Misfortune, Speckledcacophony

The irony of Shadedstar rejecting all of Fallenspeckle’s suggestions is her name before all this was Raven. She got an edgy name from a definitely benevolent entity. Why can’t Fallenspeckle?

- 2/4 of the Apprentices argued about their names. Bonus if you can guess who ❤️