A cruel fate that can befall a shattered pantheon, and the enemies of Firestar's Quietus
With SkyClan homeless and exiled at the end of the Skyfall Era, StarClan itself was in chaos. 1/5th of their ranks broke from the sky to walk with their descendants into exile, with only some of the most powerful ancestors staying behind.
Skystar himself, Patron of War, was one of them. He scoffed that a Clan that couldn't hold even a sliver of land had failed his teachings, and deserved nothing.
Scores of cats died in exile, starved, exposed, killed by predators. Cloudstar desperately tried to keep his cats together as SkyClan dwindled. Soon, there were barely enough cats to maintain a Clan, let alone such a large pantheon.
When Cloudstar died, his successor Spiderstar found herself facing a new threat. One she couldn't defeat.
Over and over, there were rats who would attack the camp. Horrible, twisted creatures of many colors, with sharp claws like a cat and jaws full of needle teeth. They swirled like a storm around a central point, wound so tightly that it was impossible to see what lay at the eye.
While watching baby spiders fly away from their mother on little silk balloons, Spiderstar devised a Great Plan. SkyClan would live apart but connected, loosely, like a web. The Rats could not kill what they could not find.
As she watched her Clan disperse, some to humans homes, some to live as rogues, the blood roared in her ears. It pounded, throbbed into a rythmn, until the words of a prophecy became overwhelming,
"EEK SHARRARRAM SSARSHAIWO!"
[Rat ancestors disastrous-they-will-kill]
Could this be true? Would their ancestors save them from the rats, someday?
(Below the cut; a guide to Ancestor Rats and how they are dealt with in Firestar's Quietus. CONTENT WARNING: BODY HORROR, GORE.)
Firestar's Quietus; The Secret of the Rats
Exactly as before, when Firestar and the spirit of Brokenstar gathered the SkyClan web together, the rats had one point of attack. They washed over the soon-to-be warriors in a wave, but they were able to fight them off.
Skywatcher laid on his side in the clearing, trembling and wide eyed, covered in horrible bites. At first they could barely get a word out of him, too shaken to speak. When he was finally able to force a word out, he could only mumble;
"I saw Lowbranch. That was my mother..."
And then, someone else came forward, sharing that one rat had the same stripes as their brother. Another recognized their son's tufts on another's ears. The camp buzzed with tension as the stories bubbled forth.
Everyone recognized something in the rats.
Something had happened to their ancestors. Something terrible. It became clear why they had never answered their prayers or sent a hero to save them. Brokenstar tried to reach them, but he could only hear a command echoing in the darkness.
"Neek urrspeekorreen urrsnyarhak, karrl urrsnakochya."
"THAT WHICH CANNOT BE FIXED, MUST BE BROKEN"
It was only later, when they went to confront the rats once and for all, that they realized what those words meant. Stumbling out into the dim light out of the barn, they saw them.
Those weren't just rats!
And the most horrible thing of all was the atrocity behind it all, the creature at the center of the swirling, agonized mass, the eye of the storm...
The Rat Leader; Cloudstar
He promised to keep his Clan together. So he did.
As each life wasted away and his Clan dwindled, smaller and smaller, as their heaven crumbled above them and became too tiny to hold their ancestors, Cloudstar kept them in one piece.
When he died, that mission continued. Trapped as this cursed creature, Cloudstar was mindlessly commanding his cats like a storm around him, dragging in both the dead and the living in a desperate attempt to save the Clan he'd vowed to protect.
SkyClan could not mend until this curse was broken. These fallen angels needed to be released, by force, to rejoin a new heaven of modern making. Slipping into the body of Firestar, Brokenstar was able to lend all of his talents for one final fight. It was just like being back at Carrionplace.
With his purpose as the fallen 5th tree, a guardian spirit, fulfilled and the rats freed from their prisons, Brokenstar's soul grew sleepy with peace. Firestar buried the acorn necklace that he had used to channel him overlooking the gorge, where it quickly sprouted into a new oak.
Rat Ancestors; Tome of Beasts
When an afterlife is destroyed, through mass death or supernatural attack, and the spirits within it cannot peacefully fade away or join a new pantheon, all of its souls can become earth-bound.
There are many types of entities and curses in this world, each one completely unique. Ancestor Rats are the form that this pantheon took.
From a distance, an Ancestor Rat could be mistaken for an odd, escaped domestic rodent. Their faces were an unsettling mix of rat and cat, with teeth laid out like a cat's but endlessly growing like a rat. They had the blade-like claws of a Clan cat, tearing through the skin and laying at various angles.
They had no physical needs, but were unable to handle being separated from their leader. Cloudstar himself, however, did need to rest in some way, returning to the barn where he died every day.
When one was killed, it would flash blue as if briefly turning into a shard of the sky, before leaving a completely standard rat corpse in its place. As long as Cloudstar was alive, the pulsar of each spirit would simply be dragged back into another rat after some time.
There was no escape until he was killed.
After the defeat of the Ancestor Rats, the spirits moved on to SkyClan's special heaven; Skypelt. Even after moving to the lake, Skypelt maintains its independence from Silverpelt, judging its own souls and staying separate (but connected) to StarClan-Prime.
With an abundance of rat bodies on their paws, SkyClan started a morbid tradition for a very special celebration. "The New Day" is celebrated every year with a grand feast, where a traditional rat meat dish called "Roasted Grandpaw" is served.
How would Cloudstar react to the fates of his children? Would he view Gorseclaw’s actions as betrayal? Would he accept Ripplestar as one of his own?
Cloudstar has a unique place in the Skypelt Pantheon as what we would consider the Grim Reaper. He is associated with cyclones, funnels, and thermal winds in a positive sense, and rats in a negative sense. He is the only "fetcher" of recently deceased souls in SkyClan culture, as opposed to Forest Four culture where fetchers can be any spirit.
Just to put into context what Ripplestar is looking at when he, a simple damned spirit, no bells and whistles, is approached by a Dark Souls boss asking him if it's culturally appropriate to call him his son.
"I am aware of the four other Clan's cats and how they view the rights of their queens, and of the insult that it is when a tom who did not raise them claims fatherhood," His voice is low and morose, perpetually carrying the tone for comforting the deceased, "but you were raised by my mate, as brother of my children. You gave your life to my memory. Might I claim ye as my own?"
"That value is younger than I am," Ripplestar keeps his tail curled behind him, wary of StarClan cats and that which they lead you to believe, "but you must understand that I doubt your intentions. What do you stand to gain?"
Cloudstar shakes his head ever so slightly and a breeze ruffles the demon's fur. "Death has no tricks and neither do I. Skypelt, not Silverpelt, has a place for all who have fought for us," he pauses before continuing, "I am making a personal offer that to me, you are more than an ally. We could be family, if that is your choice."
The rebel leader's gaze still glimmered with distrust, and he held the godlike figure in his brighter eye. "Family. Is Gorseclaw our family?"
The silence spoke loudly, but it was the shared pain and betrayal between them that made the wind howl.
Cloudstar didn't need to answer. Ripplestar turned his face foward so both eyes, dull and bright, rested on the spirit, a sad smile on his face. "Aye. Then we're all family."
OOOOGH okay Skypelt related questions: Since their ancestors were Rats, did Spiderstar only take the -star suffix as tradition? No nine lives? Nowadays, do Skyclan leaders only get their lives from Skypelt or can they get a mix of Starclan and Skypelt? How's Cloudstar coping with his Rat Crimes now that he's been freed and in Skypelt?
Spiderstar
She wasn't able to get the full 9, but she did receive at least 3. Their "Piece of Heaven" was crumbling, but hadn't yet completely fallen apart at the moment of Cloudstar's death.
They had no particular place where she could have gone to get those lives, so she climbed to the very top of the farm's silo where Cloudstar had just died. As the Clan mourned the hero who had kept them together for all this time, Spiderstar was pressing her entire body against the cold, silvery metal of the human structure.
Those bastards had taken their forest from them-- they least they could do for her was lend her their towering mockery of a Moonstone.
The first moment she knew something was about to go very, very wrong was the fact that Cloudstar was not one of the cats present to give her a life.
In Skypelt, she is the Patron of Adaptation. She has dominion over getting used to things, over not being too rigid that you overlook the correct solution, and of innovation especially through learning from others.
Because of her, baby spiders are sacred. SkyClan has immense reverence for the idea of "crafting wings" out of silk to fly away on the breeze.
Cloudstar
Was horrified and shameful of what he had done as that horrible monster, but Skypelt is much more forgiving than Silverpelt.
He kept his promise. Even as he lost his mind, his body, and his Clan, he clung to that vow when there was nothing else to hold. He is a hero to them, even after what he'd done, they love him as they do all of their family.
In self-inflicted penance, Cloudstar is Skypelt's primary fetcher. He's akin to the Grim Reaper for SkyClan tradition, unlike the other Clans who almost always send a fetcher who was close to the recently deceased. He is a Patron of Oneness (Paokepba en Ul-Arra), giving him dominion over reunions, collaborative efforts, and even Gatherings.
It's not quite a Patron of Unity, though it would be a close translation. It's Ul-Arra. Wholeness. Togetherness. In SkyClan, it also has an association with "reformations."
Skypelt Giving Lives
Modern SkyClan highly values self-reliance, as a result of their past. It's why they maintain Skypelt instead of fully integrating into Silverpelt, they are adamant that they are not subservient to anyone else's ancestors but their own.
This doesn't mean the two are totally separate. Think of it sort of like a small bubble connected to StarClan-Prime. Spirits can go back and forth between the two, but Skypelt could leave again if it ever wanted to.
So to answer your question, SkyClan leaders could receive lives from Silverpelt warriors. In practice, this is VERY rare and considered a huge honor.
If you wanna check out the old draft of Leafstar's Leadership Ceremony, it's over here! I'm probably going to make a new draft sometime soon, since BB!Firestar didn't actually loose any lives so far. I want him to the "the fire that lights the new torch," kicking off the ceremony by transferring one of his lives to her, because that seems super cool and very fitting of him.
Do you think we could get a rundown of Skyclan leaders like you did for Shadowclan? From when the destruction of their forest territory started to when Skyclan broke up?
It would be a pretty short list, because of the massive interruption.
You'll notice that the Cleric list doesn't have an interruption; that is because the Cleric took the role we eventually see Skywatcher in. They called them the Hub, after the center of a spiderweb. It was someone who would keep track of where all the dispersed cats were and pass on relevant news.
Modern Clerics evolving out of the Hub is why SkyClan's medics are so strange. They have some massive differences from a Forest Four Cleric.
There is no law against them having children. In fact, it's preferred that they did, as it's proof that they know how to care for other cats.
They can have mates, too. Echosong is actually casually the girlfriend of Leafstar.
They act more like a combined doctor/therapist than a doctor/priest. SkyClan clerics are here to treat physical and mental needs. Instead, the leader takes on more spiritual roles.
Anyway, leader succession guide;
Flystar
The destruction of the territory was happening before he was leader, but he took over when it started getting real bad in the Skyfall Era.
He was a HARDCORE kind of loyalist leader. We would know him today as a Hard Traditionalist, insisted his warriors pray harder and live better lives to prevent the destruction.
He invented the Law of the Wild, which we know as the law that bans becoming a kittypet. He did this in response to many of his warriors trying to live double lives.
Lived for a very long time, and oversaw the worst of the destruction, but Forest Four remember the story completely wrong.
The story is told that Flystar forestalled disaster with his hard ways, but Cloudstar was a weak, bumbling successor, who is ultimately blamed for SkyClan's exile.
In truth, Flystar died and left Cloudstar as a young successor. Cloudstar hadn't lost a single life or ruled for more than a year when the last acre of forest was clear-cut.
Flystar was a brown cat with black dapples on his face and chest.
Cloudstar
Gets done so, so dirty in the Forest Four history lessons. I have an entire scene dedicated to Firestar realizing that the story sounds pretty fucked up in Firestar's Quietus.
His first deputy was Buzzardtail, who was his best friend. They tried to keep the Clan together, wandering for years while looking for a new home.
In terms of personality, Cloudstar was a total worrywart. He was always preparing for the worst, and his ingenuity saved a ton of lives. He cared a lot for safety and making sure the travelers were procuring rations.
It still wasn't enough. He was a fantastic leader, soft, caring, beyond dedicated to his friends and family. Cats still died.
He was constantly missing his mate, Birdsong, and his kittens. He was notoriously amazing with the kits, often carrying them when they got too tired.
He was a big guy, too.
Displays the same vitiligo as Skystar and has a striking resemblance to him. Definitely a direct descendant.
His blotches loosely resembled an eye on his side, which ended up becoming... that.
Spiderstar
No Buzzardstar in BB. Buzzardtail died during the very long journey.
But Spiderflight knew him very well. He was her mentor.
Cloudstar died in the abandoned barn where the rats would eventually gather, every night.
Spiderflight had spent most of her life traveling, most of SkyClan had. She did not remember the old forest, just the general stretch of land that would become their Gorge territory.
She only knew what had been taken from her in stories. Kit's tales, to her, she'd been born on the move and that was where her heart was.
She picked up a lot from Cloudstar's resourcefulness. She'd always been close to the leadership, ever since she was young. Slotting into the role was easy.
Cloudstar never wanted to leave such a young successor, as Flystar had done to him, but he had no choice in the end.
She'd never been "good" at sadness. She didn't want to sit vigil in that barn with everyone else; it was too easy to give into despair if she didn't keep moving.
It was Spiderstar who settled SkyClan into the area, and she was the first Hub really. She just happened to teach Oakstep how to do it next.
Important since she only got three lives.
She had distinctive web-like stripes on her tabby body, a large "cape" over her shoulder of two big spokes connected by smaller strokes.
