#gameplay decisions

[bleakclan]

Star Fever Lore Drop and Rules

This post contains spoilers for Moon 12.

Star Fever, as introduced in Moon 12, is a condition that some leaders get upon gaining their nine lives. When a leader gains nine lives, each StarClan cat that bestows a life gives the leader a fragment of their soul to strengthen and guide them. When they lose the life that has been given to them, that soul fragment returns to StarClan to rejoin the soul of the cat it originally belonged to. Sometimes, for whatever reason, a cat's body is unable to handle housing all these extra soul bits and they come down with what the clans call Star Fever.

Star Fever is inspired by typhros, a disease in The Mighty Nein animated series in which a soul that has been reincarnated many times may lose themselves in memories of their past lives. I have also taken some inspiration from some of the depersonalization elements of In Stars and Time. When a cat has Star Fever, they become disoriented. Sometimes cats lose themselves in the memories of the cats who gave them their lives, believing them to be the current reality of the clans. They may take on characteristics of cats who gave them their lives, or believe themselves to be those cats living in the time period in which they were alive. Sometimes, cats with Star Fever can't even hold onto any sense of identity and see themselves navigating a star-filled world with no sense of what is going on around them. Cats with Star Fever find their bodies giving out as they are unable to hold the power bestowed upon them, and they lose lives at an alarmingly rapid rate, until they die for good. There is currently no cure for Star Fever, as of Moon 12.

Among the clans, this is believed to be a bad omen and a sign of weakness. Most cats believe that Star Fever is a curse for the unworthy. It is expected that if a leader is discovered to have Star Fever, they are killed by their clanmates so that a stronger leader may take their place. Letting a leader with Star Fever live is a great taboo. The reality of the matter is that Star Fever is not a punishment from the stars, it can happen to anyone, though the clans do not see it this way.

Mechanics:

When a new cat becomes leader (beginning from Moon 13 onwards), I will roll a d20. If it lands on a 1, that leader will have Star Fever. There may be times I skip the dice roll if I feel that having Star Fever would mess with the narrative, or if I think that Star Fever is what the narrative needs.

Every moon, I will flip a coin. If heads, I will allow the leader to carry on as normal. If tails, the leader loses a life to Star Fever. The coin flip carries on until a leader has lost all their lives, or until the clan decides to remove their lives by force and promote the deputy.

If you wish to use Star Fever in your own stories/lore, including adapting it in any way, you are welcome to do so! Just please credit me or link back to this post when you first introduce the concept. If someone else has already created a concept like this that I am not aware of, I will remove the request for credit and leave it as an open concept.

Star Fever is not capitalized in the story as it is not a proper noun, but for the purposes of this informational post I decided to capitalize it.

[bleakclan]

Okay, now that Moon 14 has been posted, I NEED to talk about BleakClan's new deputy because oh my god it's wild.

Putting this under a cut because it is spoilers for Moon 14. (Namely about who the new deputy is)

I meddled when I made Shadowblaze step down and made Rushstar leader, I openly admit that, but I swear I did not meddle to make Wisteriastripe deputy. I have been screaming about it ever since I progressed the moon, because it is so narratively perfect, and it is also a complete fluke.

What happened is that when Violetbark returned to BleakClan after her stint as a kittypet, the game did not assign her back as Pondskip's apprentice. It assigned her to Wisteriastripe, who has just been made a warrior that moon. I didn't notice at first, and saved the game, locking it in. Even after I changed her mentor back to Pondskip, Wisteriastripe still had Violetbark listed as a former apprentice. (you can see it now if you check Wisteriastripe's screenshot in allegiances linked in my pinned post).

When I had Rushstar take over, I wanted to let the game decide who she made her deputy. I briefly thought about how wild it would be for Wisteriastripe to be promoted (because according to game data, she has had an apprentice and is eligible for deputyship), but there were so many other cats who also were qualified I didn't think it would actually happen. But then I progressed to Moon 14 and this was one of the first events I saw:

I instantly scrolled down to the bottom before reading anything else because I had to be sure this meant what I thought it meant, and sure enough...

Wisteriastripe is deputy.

I am so excited, because with Rushstar's age, this probably means we will get to see Wisteriastar, and that will be really fun to play with narratively, given Crocuspaw's prophecy.

[bleakclan]

It should go without saying that I have "prevent retirement" on for Rushseed.

She is over 120 moons but the only way she stops being deputy is if she is in the fucking ground.

[bleakclan]

Apprenticeship Decisions and Full Names

Slight spoilers for Moon 7, mostly in regards to what types of apprentices Wisteriapaw and her sisters become.

Most of the time, I like to let the game choose what types of apprentices everyone will be (including the POV character in LifeGen), but this time I did meddle with it a bit because I had such clear ideas for what Wisteriapaw and her siblings would fit best in.

I already knew I would be making Wisteriapaw a warrior, I wanted my first POV character to be a warrior. In the future, I am going to make it random by rolling a d4 when a main character is born so I can have it be randomly decided, but also let me know what that will be so I can set their interests in that direction during their kithood.

If the game had made all of them warriors, I probably would have left it at that. Violetpaw and Lavenderpaw were warrior apprentices, with both Lilacpaw and Irispaw becoming queen apprentices. Lilacpaw was the first switch, because I thought it would be a better narrative decision to feed into her rivalry with Wisteriapaw. Also, I could not see her wanting to be a permanent queen at all. Lavenderpaw on the other hand, with her attachment to Trouthowl, made a lot of sense to not want to leave the nursery. Lavenderpaw had been assigned Shadowstar as a mentor, so I made sure that Lilacpaw was mentored by her instead. I made Irispaw a mediator because with the clan this small right now, it didn't make sense to have two queen apprentices and I had already been thinking about how she would be good for the role. Plus, BleakClan doesn't have a mediator yet and I really like trying to have at least one cat in each adult role (and gameplay-wise means I can push in-game relationships in a similar way to how I am writing them if it diverges. I don't always follow the in-game relationships in terms of like and dislike).

On a similar note, I have been thinking lately about what full names I would give them all. I'm not going to choose them myself, I really want the game to do that, but it is fun to think about what would make for interesting symbolic names. This is what I have come up with:

Wisteriapaw > Wisteriaheart: I like this name on multiple levels. For one, it mirrors Firestar's name, and Wisteriapaw's role in the narrative is very similar as an outsider trying to prove her worth to the clan. -heart also can represent Wisteriapaw's strength of character and convictions, but being paired with a flower prefix could also be seen as a insult for soft-hearted and weak among her more bigoted clanmates.

Violetpaw > Violetcall: Violetpaw is loud and unafraid to speak her mind. That's all there is to it.

Lilacpaw > Lilacsplit: This is another twofold one. It works well with her split face in terms of appearance, but it would also be great symbolism for the tension between her and Wisteriapaw in their rivalry.

Lavenderpaw > Lavenderfish: I like the idea of giving Lavenderpaw a name that is a nod to Trouthowl, especially given how much of her character is dictated by her attachment to the cat that raised her. I toyed with Lavendertrout, but I think -fish gives room for Lavenderpaw to grow into her own cat, still influenced by Trouthowl but distinct.

Irispaw > Irisgaze: Irispaw is very much a watcher. She observes and only inserts herself or makes herself known when necessary. I like how -gaze transforms the original source of Iris- (named after the flower) to be interpreted as the iris of an eye.

I'm interested to see what names the game actually gives them all (assuming they all live to receive their full name. I do not actually know because I play moon by moon as it happens). It will be a fun puzzle to figure out the narrative symbolism behind randomly generated suffixes.