Prehistory Of The Vale

Genesis

In the beginning, there were twolegs.

Having fled from a faraway land, escaping the reign of an oppressive tyrant, twolegs arrived in the Vale, encumbered by the weight of their belongings on their backs and children in their arms. In tow were their cattle and their sheep, at their heels were their dogs, and by their sides were their cats.

They had walked for countless days and countless nights in search of a new home, and guided by the grace of their Gods, they came upon a lush valley. It was here that they knew they were meant to settle; everything that had been requested in prayer could  be found here between the mountains. Fertile land to farm, clean water to drink, and the space to build homes and temples to their deities.

Together, the displaced wanderers began to turn the Vale into a home.

They began by erecting a massive temple just beyond the valley’s sloping walls, built from limestone discovered in a meadow. It was a massive, pyramidal structure, filled with dozens of rooms and three levels, referred to as the Home of the Gods. Many of these rooms were dedicated to the worship of a specific God or Goddess, other rooms were used as living quarters for the twolegs, their families, and their companions. However, it was revealed rather quickly that the temple could not be their homestead, and so they began to expand, breaking into groups so search for other adequate places to build their temples and homes, while this main temple became the mecca of worship, frequented by all and any who needed to consult with one of their many Gods.

One temple was built upon a lush meadow, surrounded by the territories most beautiful flowers. It was this same territory that the twolegs retrieved the stone needed to build their temple, resulting in the formation of the quarry.

The next was constructed within the heart of the forest, encasing a massive, sprawling oak. They believed that, because the tree was so unique, it had been created by the Gods themselves and was meant to be protected.

The third was raised on the land with the richest streams, surrounded by water. This was the largest of the three other temples, and served as the second largest living space for the remainder of the twolegs.

The final temple was carved into one of the surrounding mountains and was home to the elders, visited by the twolegs only when they needed to consult the ancient ones and seek guidance.

The last structure the twolegs built was in the very center of the valley itself. It was an amphitheater built and carved into stone. Once each season, the twolegs would come together in a grand celebration. They would feast, recite stories of their Gods in the form of story and song, and simply bask in each other’s company. At the end of  the celebration night, they would return to their homes and go about their lives.

Things carried on this way for years. The twolegs built families, tended to their herds, and spent their days in peace. However, the tranquility would not last.

As the valley twolegs lived in their separate temples, over time, a preference toward certain Gods and Goddesses began to develop. The seasonal celebrations became more like competitions, each polis attempting to talk their patron up to being the best among the rest. These competitions evolved into outright disrespectful displays; stories of unity and heroism dissolved into tales of Godly imperfection and divine flaw. Tensions began to heighten among the twolegs, worsening with time. They were no longer a unified people, but independent Covens named after the lands they lived upon.

A dark cloud formed on the horizon of a once sunshiny paradise.

Exodus

The rising tension was criticized by the elders, who attempted to remind their people why they had come to the Vale in the first place; to escape a ruler who would not give them the freedom of expression. To oppress one another would mean that their escape was for naught, and would make them no better than their former dictator.

However, the valley twolegs failed to heed their elders’ warning, and instead continued to contribute to worsening state of hostility until at last, the straining peace was shattered.

The first battle occurred between the Coven of the Oaks and the Coven of the Stream. It is unknown who started this battle, however, it was here that the vicious bloodshed began to sweep through the Vale. It took little time for the Coven of the Meadow to join the fray. These warring polis’ took to any means necessary to assert their Gods as the most superior. They set fire to territories, launched raids on the homesteads, and even began to train their companions in the art of war, bringing their rivalries right down to their loyal pets and only deepening the divide between them.

This war raged on for three long years. Lives were lost and the once luscious land had been destroyed by the conflict. Lives were lost and the once luscious land had been destroyed by the conflict. By the end of the third anniversary of the conflict, a terrible drought had gripped the Vale. Rain did not fall, and the streams slowly began to dry up, depriving the inhabitants of the valley of water and, consequently, leading into the next disaster; famine.

With the drought came even worse farming conditions. This devastated the livestock and the twolegs, who relied both on the land and their herds to keep them fed. Many died from starvation during this time, and the Coven armies were weakened significantly by this time.

Then, lastly, came the most tolling of disasters: the plague.

It was this plague that wiped out the elders, and many of the surviving twolegs. It was only when this struck the Vale that the twolegs realized this was no ordinary string of bad events; this was a curse from the Gods, who had undoubtedly become displeased by the slaughter and desecration of holy grounds.

The war came to a halt just a day shy of its fourth anniversary, and the remaining twolegs were made to face the toll of their wars at last. They had destroyed the valley that had given them a home, slayed their kin, and disrespected their Gods with their careless words and arrogance. Ashamed at having lost their way and forgetting themselves, the twolegs knew that they had made irreversible mistakes.

In order to restore peace to the Vale, the notion of Covens were abandoned, and the few came together as a group one final time. They gathered their belongings and marched into the Home of the Gods, and sealed themselves within. In an attempt to set things right the twolegs offered their material items, and then their own lives as sacrifice, in order to repent for their sins.

Twolegs no longer inhabited the Vale.

The First Clans

The night after the twolegs sealed themselves in the temple, a torrential, prolonged rain fell onto the valley for the first time in months. Washing away the blood and the debris, when the cloud cover broke a part at last, many days later, the sun shone down onto a healing Vale. The twolegs had gone, yet traces of them remained in the form of temple ruins, free-roaming cattle, and their companions, who were now without their masters and were left to fend for themselves.

Four groups of companions gathered within the amphitheater, where they had accompanied their twolegs in the days of peace. These groups consisted of both cats and dogs, who now had to deliberate what they would do in the face of their abandonment. Some of the animals felt they were better suited to live on their own, and took their leaves from the group. Many of the Vale-born loners today are descendants of these cats.

It is said that while they sat beneath the light of the full moon that evening, they were visited by the companions of the Gods themselves, who then gave the groups instructions on how they would carry on. Among them was the Queen of the companion Gods; Cassiopeia, who would double as the Ruler of Nightly Heavens. The groups were instructed to remain to live in independent factions, but they would not make the same mistake as their twolegs; they would look to one group for worship, not several. This group would become StarClan, named after their home among the band of stars, and the Covens would adopt a similar naming structure. This was to promote their individuality, but to remind them that they were all of the same vein, and all lived beneath the same rule.

The next morning, four Clans went home; OakClan, StreamClan, MeadowClan, and CaveClan. Their names were mostly God-given and holy, unlike the names used by the Clans of today.

The first leaders of these new Clans were Enoch of OakClan, Bathsheba of StreamClan, Abraham of MeadowClan, and Jonah of CaveClan. They took to the ruins of their temples and began to reconstruct their homes, using nature to shield them from elements and fortify their camps.

For a while, this worked. However cats and dogs were diametrically and historically opposed forces, and without the presence of twolegs they no longer had a force to guide them to get along. The dogs separated from the Clans and proceeded to form Packs. However, rather than remaining within the Vale or forcing the cats out, the Packs felt that they were better suited for climates with cooler temperatures. The dogs departed on a journey to find their new homes and leaving the now feline-inhabited Clans to continue building their homes.

In an attempt to maintain a relationship with the Clans, and to ward off the temptation of war or extreme divide, the Clans agreed to meet every few months beneath a full moon. On this night there would be peace, the sharing of news, and good tidings. They would sing the glory of StarClan and pray for prosperity just as their twolegs had, but this time, they would not turn their worship into a weapon.

Temple of the Lost

It was believed for a long time that the twolegs had sealed themselves alone within the Home of the Gods. However, this was not true.

The day the twolegs marched to mecca, some of their companions had slipped in after them. The dogs, ever obedient, had remained in the camps when their twolegs instructed them to do so. It was the self-serving felines who had disobeyed the commands and followed, and as a result became trapped within when the temple was sealed shut.

As the story goes, being tapped within the temple led to starvation and death. Their spirits, vindictive of their fates, were reborn as monsters. These monsters managed to find their escape from the temple, and began a reign of terror on the Vale, stealing cats from the territories and feasting upon them. It is assumed they were doing this to somehow restore their own former states, but when it did not work, sought more flesh to feast upon in an attempt to regain their own.

The Clans came together, and banished these monsters from the Vale. After this event, they decided that the Home of the Gods would be renamed to the Temple of the Lost, and it became forbidden to attempt to enter. The Clans believed that only the greatest of evils could have created such vile beings, and did not want to risk unleashing more demons onto their land. It even became a forbidden land to live upon; they believed that it was an unholy ground altogether, and dubbed this territory the Voidlands to dissuade Clans from claiming the land.

It was collectively agreed upon that attempting to claim the Voidlands would be a punishable offense, and that the other Clans would have to band together to either talk down or chase out whichever Clan would attempt to conquer cursed grounds.

Over the decades that have passed from then to the present day, the superstitious piece regarding unholy grounds has been forgotten. However, Clans continue to hold up the code of not claiming the Voidlands to this day.

After the monsters were banished the Gods went silent, reportedly no longer anywhere to be found within StarClan after the fact. StarClan, from then on, was inhabited solely by fallen Clan cats.

The Dark Ages

Battle was inevitable between the Clans. As they attempted to establish their own identities and make homes for themselves, territorial disputes led to conflict and even the occasional bloodshed. Cats argued over where to set their borders, and would push boundaries or disregard them entirely in order to hunt or gather materials for their own Clans.

Clans, rather than being a group of cats and a leader, began to break down into ranks. There were the warriors, who would patrol the territories and protect their Clan from threats. Next came the apprentices; cats who were too young, too small, and too inexperienced to fight; instead, they would be trained by the warriors in the art of battle, and once they were ready would then be named warriors themselves. Cats who were too old to fight, or could no longer fight, would then be named elders, decorated with scars to reflect their service to the Clan.

Kittens became their own rank, as did their mothers; queens and their young contributed to the growth and future of the Clan, and so they would be protected and treated as the valuable assets they were.

Medicine cats were established so that there were specific cats versed in the art of healing. In this age of battle and conquest, it was important to have cats who were centered around how to tend to wounds and avoided the conflict, so that they could heal.

And then lastly came the deputy. Leaders would come and go as they were struck down in battle, and oftentimes there would be conflict as to who would lead next. With the establishment of this rank, leaders would select a cat they felt would best lead the Clan in the event of their death. Once the deputy became leader, they would then pick a successor, and the cycle would continue.

Eventually, enough was enough among the Clans, and they realized that they were headed down a path all too similar to the twolegs of the ancient days. As they did at so many gatherings before, the Clans came together to find a solution to the problem they were facing. By the end, the Clans had added to the code that they had started to establish; cats would not trespass or hunt on another Clans territory. Clans were to challenge all trespassers, and leaders were expected to punish cats that trespassed. This put an end to the constant warring over land, and put the Clans into relative peace over the matter. Skirmishes did occur, but they were spaced out, and often only occurred when it was deserved.

A revision was made to this rule after a period of Greencough infected StreamClan, and the only patch of catmint (at that time) was located in OakClan. Medicine cats were permitted to travel to other territory in order to gather herbs, however, they were not able to deplete the resources they found, and were expected to inform their peers that they had made a trip to their territory. It was suggested that compensation be given in the event of this, however, this became more optional than a requirement as the years passed by.

The Great Melt

A terrible winter fell upon the Vale one year. It seemed as if every other day there was heavy snowfall, and every night was gripped by a bitter cold. Sickness was rampant, starvation was a constant threat.. When spring finally arrived, it was to no surprise that the Clans were relieved. However it quickly became apparent that the passing Leafbare would not go quietly.

As temperatures crept up with each passing day, the thick layer of snow began to melt. The rivers on StreamClan became harrowing and overflowed, OakClan’s territory became marshy and uncomfortable, MeadowClan became a land of mud and mush, and CaveClan was faced with constant mudslides and rock falls as the melting snow displaced the land and stone of the mountain. CaveClans trouble, unfortunately, escalated to a point of no return.

One evening, the mountain streams spontaneously flooded as a massive floe melted beneath an abnormally warm spring sun. Water came rushing in from the opening atop the camp and flushed the CaveClan cats out. Being torn away from their home, these cats were washed away. Bloated corpses washed up on the shores of all Clans, while half-drown survivors all miraculously were dragged to StreamClan territory, discovered by a patrol of warriors that evening. The few cats who had managed to survive the brutal fall and the unforgiving current relayed to StreamClan what had happened in their camp, and the news quickly spread to OakClan and MeadowClan.

The three other Clans searched high and low for the rest of CaveClan for days. However, the mountain-dwelling cats had seemingly disappeared without a trace. The remnants of CaveClan, too few in number to persist as their own Clan, became a part of StreamClan. When the waters receded, new formations had appeared on the territories, including the swamp on OakClan territory, the water at the bottom of Silverstone, the varying waterfalls found in several territories, and the streams that now crisscross the Vale.

The loss of their fourth Clan was mourned by the remaining three at the next gathering. Unfortunately, as the generations passed, CaveClan and its memory was soon lost to time, until their accidental discovery in the modern day.

The Renaissance

The Gods had still not been seen since the monsters were banished. As it had been a few generations since, the Clans began to lessen their devotion to the Gods, and instead turned their worship and praise to their ancestors in StarClan who continued to watch over and guide them. This was the formation of StarClan as an entity becoming the Clan religion, and in a way, this further unified them, even more so than the Gods initial plan.

In order to further distance themselves from the Gods that had abandoned them, the habit of using God-given names was dropped. Gatherings had become a great way for the Clans to deliberate on ideas, and so once again, the leaders and their cats sat down and discussed how they would want to be titled from there.

They decided that names would come in parts. The first part of their name would be up to the mothers. Appearance, memory, hopes-- they would name their offspring however they so desired. However, the second part of their name would indicate their rank. Kittens were ‘kits, simply enough. Apprentices were ‘paws, in reference to their paws-on training. Warriors were given names that depended on what the leader saw in them, and medicine cat apprentices would be given their names by their mentors for the same reason as the leaders.

Leaders, for a long while, carried their warrior names with them to this rank. This would change one night when each leader and each medicine cat was given a dream by a fallen ancestor, directing them all to a short-lived journey to a cavern. In this cavern they were surrounded by brilliant stones reminiscent of the night sky, and it was here they discovered where the veil was thin between the living cats and StarClan. On this night, these leaders were the first to ever be given nine lives, each given a life with a virtue to help them better guide their Clans. Leaders from this day onward would carry ‘star in their name, to display their close connection to StarClan.

This was also the evening medicine cats were told they would frequent this Cavern once every other half-moon, so that StarClan could share guidance and omens with them in order to keep their Clans protected against strife and incoming hardships.

When the cats left that night, the leaders had been renamed in order to signify the true rebirth of how Clan life would run. Oakstar, Streamstar, and Meadowstar returned home with their medicine cats to share the events of the night, and from then on, it became customary that deputies would travel to the Starlight Cavern to be granted lives and their new name, and medicine cats would visit to receive any messages StarClan might have for them.

The Age of Enlightenment

During this era, the Clans faced great prosperity, the Vale completely healed over from the scars of their ancestors’ pasts. There were times of hardship in the form of the occasional harsh winter or famine, but the Clans recovered every time, and came back better than before.

Medicine cats learned how to cultivate herbs in a way that allowed them to increase the location of plants, and to keep them healthy so that they could be harvested.

There was no conflict to be found. Not even mild scrims would arise, as the territories were exceedingly generous to all of the Clans during this time.

Their code developed and shaped to continuously improve the quality of life, and they would discuss any revisions or additions at gatherings with diplomacy and constant unison on rulings.

Living less like rivals, the relations between the Clans had never been so peaceable. Passing patrols greeted one another as friends, medicine cats spent long hours before and after their meetings enjoying one another’s company, and gatherings would sometimes even last until the earliest hours of the following day, cats sharing tongues to their heart’s content.

It was so perfect, it felt as though nothing could overturn this tide.

And yet, this era of peace would last for an entire decade, before things unfortunately would take a turn.

Prewar

The era of peace was not viewed fondly by all.

In OakClan, a young warrior by the name of Sleetstorm felt as though the Vale had fallen into a lazy, gluttonous state. He had spent his kithood and a good portion of his free time in his apprenticeship around the elders, eagerly soaking up their stories of ancient battle and conquest. Stories of heroes and glory, triumph and defeat. Cats who did epic grand things and in the end earned immortalization and reverence by the living and dead both. These stories had inspired in him the aim for greatness and to become grand - to earn StarClan's favor and become ingrained in history forever. 

And yet, he came to realize that such a thing would be impossible. The Clans were too detached now. Peace had made them careless - the Code was followed too loosely, Clan values meant nothing. It was like a clowder of lazy loners and it drove him mad. Try as he might to evoke adventure or ambition in Clanmates, no one bit - no one cared to change the status quo.

Sleetstorm steadily became more malcontent with the way of things. For a while he attempted to content himself with this life, but he couldn’t do it. Life was too boring, a repetitive cycle, where nothing changed and no one dared to. The Clans would never grow if they carried on this way. Sleetstorm slowly came to realize that he had been born for a purpose - that was to restore the Clans to their former ways. Strong and proud, devout followers of the stars. That was how he would become a hero. And the night that a StarClan Cat visited Sleetstorm in his dreams, tempting him to pursue his goals, he knew he had to act.

It started with careful planning. Sleetstorm began to convince and recruit cats to join his cause from within his Clan, putting his charm to use by luring cats in and hooking them on his goals. His idea was to keep this centered to OakClan, but as his ambition with this salvation effort grew, so did his reach. Soon, Sleetstorm had clandestine support in all of the Clans, cats eager to be a part of the vision he saw. With this behind him, and after moons of preparation, he put his plan into motion, calling it operation Starfavor.

Operation Starfavor

The sudden death of the deputy Fernwing had come as a shock to OakClan. She had been a young cat in her prime, and yet she was discovered dead in her nest one morning with no apparent cause. Unbeknownst to OakClan, she had been fed deathberry-stuffed prey by the Clan medicine cat Spiderbeeze, who had become an accomplice to Sleetstorm’s plans early on. It was his support, and the support of so many Clanmates, that earned Sleetstorm the deputy title.

Sleetstorm managed to gain the trust and support of OakClan with his charisma and passion. His intentions were open, even if the intensity was not always overt. He sought to make OakClan better - he sought to make everyone better. Buzzardstar's next few lives went quickly. In fact, they seemed to go all at once - one day he was healthy, the next he was gravely ill, and the day after that, Sleetstorm and Spiderbreeze were going to Starlight Cavern to meet with StarClan. When the pair returned that night, Sleetstar was now leader.

Though the changes were subtle enough to go without detection at first, they happened to rapidly that it seemed in just a moon's time OakClan was a new Clan. Sleetstar named one of his closest OakClan conspirators, Blazingsky, as his deputy, and the two toms began a strict rule over the Clan. OakClan needed to stop overindulging, they needed to better protect their borders, and needed to be proudly independent. The Clans were like one big clowder, and that wouldn't do. 

Sleetstar spent moons of planning across the Clans. In MeadowClan, his strongest supports were their medicine cat, Juniperpool, and a warrior named Shadowhawk, among a pawful of others. StreamClan was harder to recruit, but he managed to secure his strongest supporter, the deputy, Basilfrost. He, along with a group of StreamClan warriors, would be his aid. Through it all, the mysterious StarClan cat would occasionally visit his dreams, dropping tips for Sleetstar to follow and giving him advice. 

When it was time, the tom staged a Vale-wide coup. The valley ran red that night, and when dawn broke the horizon, it was a new era ; Sleetstar appointed cats in all of the Clans that best fit his ideals. As things changed and the world took a dramatic turn, cats apart of the Starfavor effort never anticipated the turn everything was about to take.

The Scarlet War

In just a few moons time, peace was nothing more than a distant memory.

Of course, a harsh coup was not met with the immediate jubilance Sleetstar anticipated. He expected at least some to be grateful that they were snapped out of their idle lives, rejoicing in the salvation that came with liberation from gluttony and a never-ending cycle of sameness. What he got instead wa anguish - cats who called him and his compatriots monsters, cats who despised him and mourned their lousy, non-contributing Clanmates. It infuriated him, and try as he might to show the naysayers reason, tensions rose and fights broke out.

Sleetstar's party had started to derail from the original mission. While all involved knew that spilt blood was a possibility, slowly, it went from chance to expectation. Cats began to forget what it was all for, and none so much so as Sleetstar himself. The weight of trying to balance this effort, pushback, and increasing conflict and pushback was starting to rattle him. Sleetstar was no longer charismatic, kind, or warm - instead, he was he had become cruel, volatile, and paranoid.

Cats who questioned Sleetstar or any of his compatriots met increasingly brutal punishment or agonizing ends, examples being made out of each and every one in order to establish his dominance over the Vale. Battle after battle cost countless lives for all three of the Clans and yet there was never once a lapse in his control. His grip remained tight, and Sleetstar was sure that StarClan was soon to show their approval for their commitment to the Code. That cat who visited him - surely, they would show themselves again and share StarClan's praise.

Nevertheless, despite his seemingly never-ending support and strength, there were cats determined to overturn his regime more than he was determined to keep it.

It started with an OakClan warrior named Rainfrost, who had been born into Sleetstar’s leadership. However, while the current leader had been reared on stories of war and violence, Rainfrost had been told stories of hope and the days of peace. Her inspiration became centered around the idea of restoring peace to the Vale, and so she decided she would do everything she possibly could to achieve her goal, even at the cost of her life.

Carefully, she gathered her support from cats who had suffered immensely beneath Sleetstar. At gatherings she would attempt to seek out cats, but ever perceptive, managed to avoid (for the most part) cats who were in favor of the bloodshed. Whenever she did come across these loyalists, she would always claim that she was testing them, and the excuse never failed to hold up.

Rainfrost’s ring of patrons steadily grew. Cats who had once thought Sleetstar’s reign was The Way were slowly converted, and she was always quick to act on cats who had been personally slighted by Sleetstar. However, all the while, she put up the front of being Sleetstar’s biggest supporter. This would lead to one of her greatest triumphs.

Blazingsky had stepped out of line with Sleetstar, and the leader, determined to show that even his closest needed to follow his ruling, brutally murdered Blazingsky’s mate Riverbird and promptly demoted the deputy. In turn, he named Rainfrost as his new successor, and Rainfrost admittedly couldn’t pity Blazingsky, feeling that he deserved such strife. She only pitied Riverbird for having been the one to pay the price.

Sleetstar’s murder of Riverbird would be one of his biggest mistakes. The unwillingness to bend for his closest advocate had shaken many of his supporters to his core, showing that his true nature was nothing more than darkness and bloodlust, lost to his own madness of wanting to be feared and hailed as one of OakClan’s ‘greatest leaders’. Rainfrost benefitted from this immensely. This was not without cost; Sleetstar, aware of his error, began to become paranoid that his crown was at risk. As a result he began to massacre cats on a whim, accusing them of treason with baseless claims.

Rainfrost, no longer willing to sit back and simply watch as Sleetstar killed so mindlessly, finally launched her bloodied uprising against the leader and his supporters.

This resulted in a Vale-wide war on par with that of the ancient twolegs. Cats perished in numbers though to be impossible as conflict raged on day-in and day-out. Civil war tore the Vale asunder and the earth was stained scarlet from the blood that never ceased to flow over the land.

And yet, what once seemed to be a war that would destroy the Clans completely was turning in tide. Sleetstar’s biggest zealots were overrun by cats determined to end the needless murder. StreamClan was recaptured, MeadowClan was returned, and at last, OakClan was reclaimed in a final battle between foils when Rainfrost managed to kill Sleetstar once and for all.

Those who supported the now-fallen leader were killed, driven out, or fled, and as the sun rose over a crimson Vale, for the first time in seasons, there was peace.

Aftermath

The Clans had been pushed to the brink of extinction by the end of the Scarlet War, with only a pawful of cats in each Clan once they accounted for the deceased and the missing.

Those who remained came together at the Heart of the Vale for the first time in seasons, and vowed that they would never allow such atrocities to ever happen again. They would build a world that was safe for their kittens and the generations that came thereafter.

Rainfrost, unsurprisingly, received overwhelming support to become OakClan’s next leader. Stonestrike, a StreamClan tom who had been the most hardworking rebel in his Clan, was appointed to lead next. And in MeadowClan, a tom named Eagleheart, who had shown unyielding support for Rainfrost since the very beginning of her campaign, stepped up to lead his Clan next. They made a pact among themselves to never lead their Clans into darkness, and would only ever inspire righteousness, encourage their Clans to rebuke all evil, and to use the Scarlet War as a cautionary tale of over-ambition.

Together the three of them led their Clans through a turbulent period of overcoming the traumas of such a horrific war. Working together, the three Clans helped each other restore their ravaged camps, and then returned to their respective territories. The Clans would exist with passive rivalry, but with a deep and profound respect for one another. Slowly but surely, they rebuilt their lives.

Such like the scars from ancient wars of the past, these, too, healed.