Sootstar’s Survival

Hi, I’m Petall (they/them) and this is the blog for my ClanGen comic!

[sootclan]

Welcome to SootClan

Not long ago calamity struck the 5 Great Clans and nearly wiped out every cat, both living and dead. The survivors banded together as one, seeking out a new place to call home. The journey was arduous, and tensions rose. By the time they settled in a new forest, they had split from one into four: SootClan, TansyClan, CloudClan and PlumeClan, named for each of the founders.

This is SootClan, and this is their story.

First Moon: Moon 0

Latest Moon: Moon 3 (Part 2)

Allegiances (Google Doc)

Map

Comicfury

Other Blogs you should know:

@bleaksoot-cats - my blog for interacting with the ClanGen community.

@lycanthrope-petall - my main blog.

@bleakclan - a written LifeGen story with dark tones.

@workclan - an extremely low-key ClanGen run done via doodles at work.

Content Warnings

(I may add more as they come up)

General content you can expect to see in warrior cats, violence, gore, death (including child death), pregnancy, swearing, horror themes, body horror.

About the Comic

My name is Petall (they/them), and I have been a big fan of Warriors for a long time. It's been about a decade since I last was active in the fandom, but a recent wave of nostalgia has me returning. As of the start of this comic, I am currently rereading the books (and reading for the first time those that have come out since I've been off). I was very excited to discover ClanGen, and I have become obsessed.

This comic will be very low-key. I have a lot of other creative projects that I am working on, I work full time, and I am planning on getting my Master's Degree next year. My plan is to keep this low-pressure, so I will not be keeping to any schedule, just creating when I have the time and inspiration. I have a different clan on ClanGen for rushing through when I want to play.

The title of this blog will reflect the current arc, which I am classifying as whoever the current leader is. I am going off of the super edition naming convention.

For timelines, please consider this comic taking place many, many years after the last warrior cats book. (Or a divergent timeline if eventually the number and names of the canon clans change). I have made sure that each clan has at least one cat from each of the five clans, at least to start.

ClanGen Playstyle

I am playing on expanded mode.

I like to keep things as random as possible, though I may (very rarely) manually choose things like mates or mentors if I am feeling super strongly about something.

The exception to the above is I will change names for kits born in the clan to reflect names based on the parents' names or names I think they would choose. For single abandoned kits, I will keep their generated names.

I have also created clans on ClanGen for TansyClan, CloudClan and PlumeClan. I will be advancing those moon by moon alongside SootClan, but they exist mostly to give me characters to draw from if there are interactions between clans, and to track who the leader is at any given time.

Whether or not I proceed on patrols will depend on what choices I think the cats on it would actually make. The majority of the time, I will proceed. For patrols that will lead to inviting new cats to the clan, I will flip a coin to see if I proceed in order to try to keep the clan size manageable. (As an exception I will always proceed on the abandoned kit one because I would feel bad leaving them in the forest).

Important Blog Tags

#Sootmoons - Official moon updates

#Allegiances - Character Refs

#SootClan Bonus - Additional content like art, bonus chapters, etc.

#SootClan Fanart - Art of the characters done by other people.

#Not a Moon Update - Any post I make that is just me babbling about the game/story but has no important bearing overall.

[bleaksoot-cats]

I'm making this here so I can reblog it to BleakClan and SootClan instead of writing the same post twice, but in light of recent events in the ClanGen/Cat Comic community.

These stories are trans friendly. I am a trans non-binary author, and trans characters are integral to the stories I tell.

Right now, since both stories are so close to their start, the trans characters that exist are in more minor roles (Blueclaw in BleakClan, Sparksky in SootClan) but I have plotlines planned that will dive deeper into trans themes and there will be many, many trans characters. While I may dive into themes of discrimination in my stories, I do not accept any real life discrimination towards any marginalized identities. Anyone coming to these blogs spouting transphobia, or making my trans characters cis will be blocked on sight.

[sootclan]

I just realized it is SootClan's first birthday!

I apologize that there is no fancy art or anything to celebrate, this comic really has fallen to the wayside in comparison to BleakClan, but I still want to take a moment to recognize SootClan for reaching this point!

Even though SootClan is more on the backburner, I still am spinning this comic around in my head and hope to return to it and start updating regularly at some point! I'm sorry to any SootClan fans for how long this has been taking. I've started more creative projects than I know what to do with, and I'm still figuring out how to balance them all.

[sootclan]

Now that I have BleakClan as a way to get through moons quick enough to have a long-form multi-generational story, I'm going to be making some changes to how I do SootClan to help me feel less pressure to get pages out and hopefully update more often.

I have one more part left in Moon 3 that I will release all at once the way I have been doing. I am going to shift myself away from square pages though and start doing regular comic sized pages. I was intimidated by the comic format and was more comfortable with the squares, but I can see now how formatting works better the other way. This will also give me less to draw to get through events because I can make things happen in a more condensed amount of space.

When I start Moon 4, I am going to start posting pages 1 or 2 at a time (I haven't decided which one yet) like a lot of other comics do. This will help me post more regularly because a) I will not be waiting until I am done a whole section to post and b) I won't be feeling the pressure to get 7-10 pages done before I can post. 1-2 is a lot more manageable and is easy to churn out in an hour or two while doing something like watching the weekly Critical Role stream.

Moons are likely going to be longer overall but that will allow me to have the space and time to really dig into the events I want to, rather than trying to get through moons as fast as I can.

Also, I have started posting SootClan on comicfury! I didn't announce it when I did it, but the link is in the pinned post.

[cccdiscord]

Weekly Spotlight: SootClan

"Not long ago calamity struck the 5 Great Clans and nearly wiped out every cat, both living and dead. The survivors banded together as one, seeking out a new place to call home. The journey was arduous, and tensions rose. By the time they settled in a new forest, they had split from one into four: SootClan, TansyClan, CloudClan and PlumeClan, named for each of the founders. This story follows SootClan, a clan desperate to survive and carve a place for themselves among the other three. With an aging healer who refuses to take an apprentice, and cats with strong loyalties outside of the clan, Sootstar will do anything to keep her clan together, or die trying."

Check out SootClan here!

[clangen-lore]

✶⋆.˚ CLANGEN ASK GAME ( v1 )

send an emoji into the author's inbox to ask a question! for characters, send an emoji + the character's name.

✎ㅤ. . .ㅤ for the characters

🫁 who are they closest to?

🗣️ what is their voice like? do they have a specific voiceclaim?

😡 do any clanmates get on their nerves?

📛 how do they feel about their name?

⛓️‍💥 what rule of the warrior code would they be most likely to break?

👥 do they enjoy going to gatherings?

💡 what is their favorite memory?

🦅 do they prefer hunting, border patrolling, training, or herb gathering?

😼 would they be a good mentor? why or why not?

🦉 are they an early riser or a night owl?

🌸 what is their aesthetic?

🌬️ what would their zodiac sign be?

🤲 are they extroverted, introverted, or ambiverted?

🏳️‍🌈 what is their orientation/gender identity?

🏡 what's their relationship with their family like?

😊 share a fun fact about them!

⛪️ are they religious or superstitious in any way?

🧍‍♀️ if they were a human, what would they be like?

⭐️ what would they be like as leader?

🌿 what would they be like as a medicine cat?

🦴 what is the worst injury they've ever suffered?

🎙️ are there any rumors or gossip about them?

🛏️ do they have any fears or phobias?

☁️ do they have any bad habits?

😶‍🌫️ do they share any traits with the author?

✎ㅤ. . .ㅤ for the author

🎭 what's something you like about your art/writing?

🖼️ what's been your favorite scene to create so far?

📝 how do you plot for the story, or do you write/draw as you go?

🎲 a moment the game derailed your plot?

😸 favorite relationship dynamic in the clan?

‼️ give a teaser of something coming up!

❤️ who is your favorite character?

💔 who is your least favorite character?

🐣 tell us a fun fact or easter egg about the story!

💥 what is your favorite headcanon you've come up with?

🎈 what is your favorite headcanon you've seen from fans?

🐈 did any other clangen creators inspire you?

🏴‍☠️ have you ever re-rolled a moon?

💧 has there been a death or event that genuinely upset you?

🌱 your favorite background character?

🪶 a design you're really proud of?

🔧 do you ignore certain game mechanics? if so, which ones, and why?

📌 at what point would you consider the clan/story complete?

🧃 what kind of asks/questions do you love getting?

🐱 when did you first get into warrior cats?

📢 ramble about whatever lore you want!

[sootclan]

Honeypaw and Otterfluff come up with a catchy song together.

(For the @cccdiscord clan comfort event)

[sootclan]

Some family fun in the snow!

(For the @cccdiscord Clan Comfort Event)

[sootclan]

Name: Tansystar

Gender: Female, she/her

Clan: TansyClan

Position: Founder/Leader

Personality: Strict

Skills: Great Climber

Age (as of Moon 3): 92 Moons

[sootclan]

SootClan - Moon 3 Part 2 (Leaf-Bare)

Sparksky's running nose is gone.

Violetfreckle thinks that she can tell Ashenpaw something important.

Start | Previous | Next

Characters (in order of appearance)

Ashenpaw: Apprentice, he/they, 9 moons

Sparksky: Warrior, she/her, 26 moons

Violetfreckle: Warrior, she/her, 83 moons

Tansystar: TansyClan Leader, she/her, 92 moons

[sootclan]

The next update is finally done! I have it scheduled to post at 9am pacific time tomorrow, since it is quite late now. Since it will be posting while I am at work, I won't be able to update the links and everything until later in the day.

[sootclan]

While taking a break between drawing panels for the next update, i decided to draw a rough map of the clan territories. Mapmaking is not something I have a lot of experience with so don’t take this as exactly to scale (for example, CloudClan’s mountain is more of a small mountain, and TansyClan’s territory would be about the same size as SootClan’s), I just wanted to provide a visualization of the overall layout.

[sootclan]

I just finished updating CloudClan in the allegiances to the newly generated clan. I also took the liberty of revamping TansyClan and PlumeClan as well because I really wanted to set them in territories on ClanGen that reflect how I actually imagine them. (CloudClan in a mountainous area, PlumeClan on a beach, and TansyClan in a meadow). I tried to keep some characters similar to their previous iterations, but most of them have fresh new cats.

We'll be meeting some cats from other clans this moon. I'm hoping to work on my next update this weekend, which will involve one character from another clan. The final update for this moon will involve an introduction to Sootstar's younger brother in CloudClan that I was mentioning in a previous post.

[sootclan]

Fuck I was cleaning up some old ClanGen files that I don't use anymore and I accidentally deleted CloudClan. I am going to have to remake it. (I'm glad that no one has been introduced from that clan yet, I'll just have to rewrite that part of the allegiances)

[sootclan]

Okay, this might be better... There is a cat in the new CloudClan that I might make Sootstar's little brother. I might add a third part to moon 3 to introduce him......

[sootclan]

Fuck I was cleaning up some old ClanGen files that I don't use anymore and I accidentally deleted CloudClan. I am going to have to remake it. (I'm glad that no one has been introduced from that clan yet, I'll just have to rewrite that part of the allegiances)

[sootclan]

I'm actually really happy with the quick and easy style I used for the new year resolutions page I just did. Obviously I want to keep the comic in full colour, but I think I might use that style for answering asks.

[sootclan]

New Year Resolutions

My SootClan piece for week one of the @cccdiscord Clan Comfort Event! Sootstar sure has her work cut out for her, wrangling this new clan into her ideal image.