When cats become mates in Riverclan it is celebrated and made into a ceremony. The mates are given gifts of pretty shells and rocks to add to their newly shared nest, and the pair, or more, carefully weave necklaces together to represent their love. The Pod Mother is expected to call a meeting to officiate the connection with a speech, ending with the mates saying the phrase “Mirra welcome us together”.

Becoming mates with someone in Riverclan is a big big deal. It’s you proclaiming that you would love this cat through sickness, health, mistakes, triumphs and death itself. It’s a declaration of loyalty to love above all else and Riverclan sees this as a beautiful thing. When it’s not causing problems of course. Because of this belief that marriage is a sign of true loyalty, if a cat requests to stop being mates with their partner, the whole clan would shame and shun the cat, especially if the mate does not want to separate as well.

CLAN MYTHOS: RIVERCLAN

Thought it could be a fun exercise in creativity to create mythos for the clans!

Here’s our first creature of Riverclan mythology, the Mere.

Mere or the Mere toes the line between fish and feline, a fully aquatic legend that reaches far into the past of the cats by the lake. The Mere has a scruff of gills, webbed paws on stout legs and a large, powerful tail it uses to propel itself. It’s stout legs allow for better balance on the slippery boulders that litter the stream and mouth of the lake.

The Mere is rarely seen, if only by warriors on border patrol in the early morning. The Mere can be an indication of dangerous water, such as flash flooding or a storm.

Kits learning to swim for the first time often report feeling something slippery slithering around their paws; this is said to be Mere helping to teach the young kits, gifting the Riverclan cat’s their love of water.

The Mere loves gnawing on dried fish skin, and occasionally leaves the remnants of its victims skinned on the banks of the stream. Riverclan gives offerings of fish skin interwoven with reeds to help the snacks float on their journey. The skin must be rainbow trout, as any other fish skin has not resulted in the clan’s protection during dry and flooding seasons.

want them to have Opinions about the other clans

they value being well-spoken. being able to defend your opinions.

prayer is a big fucking deal.

they’re very chill parents. kits are chill.

much like how riverclan does not understand why everyone else hates fish, they don’t understand why people have problems with frogs and lizards

they also really don’t care where you come from, what’s important is where you are

they don’t really insist on renaming loners/rogues who join, because names are Where You Are From, and so it’s kind of disrespectful to force someone to change that

it’s not a judgement on anyone

very communal, very non-nuclear families. probably if riverclan has the strongest father/kit relationships, shadowclan has the weakest.

i think respect is also important, culturally

while thunderclan and riverclan are “warm,” and windclan is egalitarian, the idea of respect your elders is very important in shadowclan

Clan cats are very different than domesticated cats: they’re bigger, stronger, and better at fighting. However, ShadowClan cats aren’t like the other Clans, who rely on digging for graves and tunnels. Their paws are small, and they aren’t built for digging like the other Clans.

Since ShadowClan can’t dig as well as the others, when cats die, they don’t bury them. Instead, they drag their dead to what they call the Graveyard. There, they pretty much feed their dead Clanmate to the crows. The other Clans see this as gruesome and dark, and some apprentices are interested in seeing it, event trespassing onto ShadowClan’s territory to see it. Of course, they were caught and brought home.

ShadowClan believes that they are giving back to nature by letting the crows eat them, and that this was sort of like a peace offering: crows are signs of death, if ShadowClan let the crows eat them, the believed they were keeping their Clan safe from death. It’s the circle of life: the crows eat the cats, the crows die and get eaten by the worms and bugs, the bugs get eaten by the birds, and the cats eat the birds.

The first cat to be eaten by the crows was a ShadowClan medicine cat, Mistcreek; she was deathly afraid of the crows, saying that they spoke to her, telling her that if ShadowClan didn’t bow to them, they would send a plague to wreak havoc on ShadowClan. Mistcreek begged her leader, Tansystar to order their Clan to stop eating the crows, but they wouldn’t listen. ShadowClan needed prey and crows were plentiful. They wouldn’t stop eating them just because Mistcreek thought the birds were speaking to her.

So, the crows’ words came true: a horrible sickness plagued ShadowClan, leaving them with few warriors. Even Mistcreek’s apprentice passed away. Mistcreek’s den was full, and many warriors tried to convince Tansystar to listen to Mistcreek and stop eating the crows. When Tansystar go sick, her lives were being ripped away one by one, and her deputy, Pepperclaw, listened to her warriors, punishing any cat who ate the crows.

Then, Mistcreek got sick. The small Clan did all they could to keep her alive, but nothing worked. When she died, she uttered her last words: “The crows will not stop until they’ve had their revenge. We must give back after taking from them for so long.”

The same day she died, Tansystar passed away as well. Pepperclaw and her Clan took the leader and medicine cat to a place near the end of Clan territory and lay them both there. Crows circled them, glaring at them with beady eyes. Pepperclaw lay her dead Clanmates in front of them and they cried out, leaping down from the trees and hopping over to them. One crow stepped forward and bowed its head to Pepperclaw.

“Thank you, young leader,” it crowed. “As a reward for heeding our words, we will take the plague away from you.” As it stepped over to Mistcreek, it added, “The cat who will take the place of this cat shares our name.”

Once they returned home, Pepperclaw named a young apprentice, Crowpaw, the new medicine cat, and he took up his new job happily, trained by ThunderClan’s medicine cat. Pepperclaw was named Pepperstar, and Crowpaw was named Crowcall. Pepperstar made one rule as leader: no cat shall eat the crows on ShadowClan territory, and all their dead will be given to them as a peace offering. Every cat who defied this law seemed to disappear from Clan territory entirely, but some swear they find bits of their Clanmates’ fur left in the Graveyard.

“The winds usually bring with them change. Change is not what any cat should be afraid of; however, as it stands, WindClan is the only Clan able to rise up and meet the unexpected without batting an eye. That is what gives us strength; I could not be prouder of that.” - Maplestar of WindClan, during her retirement ceremony.

Often thought of as the pacifists of the four Clans, WindClan cats tend to promote peace among their neighbours, and they largely motion to accept outsiders and rulebreakers more often. Despite this, they are very holy cats, and believe that StarClan will always guide them on the right path - even if it means adapting the warrior code. Prior to the leadership of Heatherstar the first, few outsiders truly knew what happened within WindClan borders: while the cats themselves were relatively social, the politics and activity of the Clan was a total secret. This changed when Heatherstar took charge of the Clan, and allowed a ThunderClan exile to join. WindClan cats are typically lenient when it comes to border matters, forging specific paths for Clans to cross, but they will not let their kindness be tested easily; in the True Territories, a feud with ShadowClan over said matter had been ongoing for quite some time. 

WindClan cats are the most diverse of any of the Clans when it comes to pelts and body types. Their openness to allow in strangers has widened the gene pool, leading to several original looks; even twins will have unique, defining features. However, the one thing every WindClan cat has in common are strong, typically long legs. Most will also be skinnier than cats from other Clans; fur will be windblown in almost every direction, but a WindClan cat can make the look work. WindClan warriors tend to be among the longest-lived cats in all the Clans, rivalled only by ThunderClan after reaching the Lake Territories.

“We may have to move to stay on our feet, but our roots forever remain! We will never forget those who paved the way for us to stand here today. Without them, we would simply be unable to bloom.” - Heatherstar the II, on her first address to the Clan

Following the death of Palebird, WindClan cats began to adopt flowers and feathers as a part of their appearance. Flowers will be woven into tufts of fur by denmates at a time when they’re sharing tongues; usually, these flowers are chosen based on the burial places of relatives or lovers. For example, the deputy Talltail and leader Maplestar both wear foxglove behind their ears and in thicker fur, foxglove being the flower growing above the graves of Finchkit, Palebird, and Sandgorse. The medicine cats Barkwing and Spottedleaf wear heather in memory of Hawkheart; Barkwing additionally adorns himself with thistle and violet in memory of his brother and mother, and Spottedleaf wears milkmaids in memory of her brother. The tradition of wearing flowers in memory of lost loved ones is unique to WindClan, though cats with WindClan roots or ties in other Clans may pick up the practise.