This upcoming weekend (Friday the 5th to Sunday the 7th) we have a battle scheduled, MoonClan and DawnClan will band together to carry out their first attack on NightClan, who will go to SunClan for support. The battle will be long with no clear winner, MoonClan and DawnClan will withdraw with the excuse that they have weakened NightClan enough to be able to return when their own strength has returned and destroy the clan, NightClan will claim that they were forced to flee.'

In the last plot planning blog entry Storm&Co suggested a new arc involving the leaders being overthrown that gathered quite a bit of enthusiasm. Angel and I have been throwing ideas back and forth for a bit and decided that it would be best if the current sickness plot lead directly to this, rather than ending this arc, waiting a bit, and beginning that one.

Following the battle taking place this weekend, the sickness will spread rapidly through MoonClan and DawnClan. Many more cats will fall ill, especially among those wounded in the battle. MoonClan and DawnClan leadership will begin to weaken and their clan’s criticism of them rise following a number of mistakes, openly beginning to break under stress, or perhaps saying or doing something perceived as cowardly, such as abandoning their commitment to destroying NightClan. What exactly this is should be planned for larger mistakes, but for smaller mistakes it will be up to the leaders themselves how they want their own leaders to begin to fall.

Weepingtiger will discover a plant that can be used to treat the disease and grows only in the thickest sections of DawnClan and MoonClan’s territories. He will share this knowledge with DawnClan’s medicine cats, but they will keep it secret from their enemy clans and point to the recovery of their warriors as being StarClan’s favor to their clans, and, most importantly, their medicine cats. This will place the medicine cats in a favored position among these clans, particularly in contrast to the seemingly weak leaders. Jaystar and Willowstar will make the mistake of attacking NightClan again when their warriors are still recovering, against Weepingtiger and Leorio’s public advice to wait. This will be a devastating battle for them.

Weepingtiger will capitalize on this situation to gather the support of his clan to run out or kill Jaystar, claiming to have received a prophecy from StarClan telling him to do so. His clan will support him and the new clan structure and values he proposes. The new leadership will be similar in structure to a tribe, with a combined leader and medicine cat position. To compensate for the fewer number of cats in charge that this would cause, there could be two medicine cat apprentices at a time, the medicine cat/leader would choose who would be their successor and they’d be a deputy medicine cat, or whatever title we decide to give them. They would take a very direct and important position in managing the clan, including giving periodic talks to the apprentices and warriors of the clan about StarClan and their code. These leader medicine cats will advocate for a closeness with StarClan and mandate that all clan cats worship them. They will be strict with the warrior code, even minor infractions will result in severe punishments. Stress will be placed on the birth of new kits, to strengthen their clan, as well as on apprentices and warriors spending a greater portion of their time serving the clan. Their modified code would include changes such as a rule specifying medicine cats not being allowed to have kits, that a clan cannot overthrow their leader unless both medicine cat apprentices agree and receive a sign from StarClan, that the warriors do not need to come to the aid of others, even enemy kits, because loyalty to their own clans is their greatest duty, the clans may chase out other clans who do not believe in StarClan—things like that. This new code will need to be drafted, ideas for rules to be added are greatly appreciated. The leader medicine cats will be appointed by the website owner as they will be in an even higher position of power than the current leaders.

Under this new structure, MoonClan will attack NightClan again and be more successful, or be able to successfully defeat a NightClan attack. While this will have more to do with the sickness having being eradicated from their clan while it remains strong in NightClan, Weepingtiger will pin their victory on StarClan’s approval, prompting DawnClan to fall to this new system of leadership as well.

All of this new arc is still up in the air, of course. This plan can be changed, it is just what Angel and I came up with for larger plot points, with ideas of my own to transition through these bigger plot points. It will be one of the more dramatic plots that we have had on the website, and will require a large commitment from all members to work correctly. After the plot has run its course, the new leadership will fall again and the clans will return to their traditional structure.