Post by Egotistic on Jun 16, 2022 14:45:40 GMT -6
Tidechaser
LichenClan
a large blue-point bicolor she-cat with grey-blue eyes.
warrior
she-cat | female
60 moons
Appearance
A veritable beauty, even now, well on though she is in moons, Tidechaser’s good breeding shows in every facet of her being—the full, luxurious coat, the heavy plume, soft, rounded features, blue eyes, and strong limbs. In color, she bears the customary points—the namesakes of her Clan—just there upon the face and the limbs, broken only by the palest ivory strands at the blaze betwixt the eyes, the muzzle, and the paws, just beneath the blue stockings of her limbs. However, so thick and long is her coat, such paws can hardly be seen, and likewise, it is due to its immense and unnatural abundance that even her physique is lost beneath it, hiding the growing pudginess and the loosening of a belly once tight from moons of tireless drilling now gone to softness from a life of comfortable and well-earned lounging.
Personality
Positives
| Negatives
|
Honed from a young age to display the virtues of her Clan and faith, Tidechaser is well learned in the political and social past-times of her clanmates. She is silver-tongued and sultry, equipped with a vulpine cunning and deliberateness of speaking, which does not use any word without first considering the meaning. As such, she has grown learned in the art of double-meanings, in uttering compliments which belly petty insults and snide remarks veiled by honeyed words. She is unnervingly observant, and even more so does she radiate a certain allure that draws those towards her despite her lecherous and conniving nature.
In this way, Tidechaser is a cat of appetites. All that she wants, she will get, and if she cannot, she will certainly find a way to do so, or reign misfortune on all those who deny her. In this drive is a cold cruelty and calculating nature which is pragmatic in its execution and malignant in essence, and where some may only know her for her external piousness and loyalty to her Clan, underneath such external displays is a cat who grasps desperately for control and does not shrink from condescending jabs and gelid acts
History
00 MOONS
60 Moons Ago, the Great Swell… As winter ebbed into the start of spring and the air grew warm with the promise of new-leaf, so too did spirits rouse and the restless wants with them. And as bellies filled on the newfound abundance of prey, as the winter famine ceased from their bone-pricked hides and gave flesh to their gaunt frames, war beckoned and could be felt throughout that idle island, freshly thawed. Yet none felt it as Darkwave did, as he loomed over his mate and their two surviving kits—a son and a daughter both—and two others, born lifeless and cold, discarded, and forgotten, lost before their very conception, never to breathe the air or taste their mother's milk.
Yet it did not matter if they were lost, for two heirs yet lived and drank doggedly at their mother's teat, ever in their likeness, fierce even at birth as they jostled and pushed. Yet the son was always weaker, always smaller than the daughter, who drank most fiercely of all and jealously guarded her teat. And as his mate stooped and lapped their heads, weary and tired and hunger-stricken from a long, hard winter, she bid him name them, and so he did.
So it was that Tidekit and Cragkit came into the world, and Marshkit and Riverkit left it.
02 MOONS
58 Moons Ago, the Quiet Lull… They took her at sunrise. Veritable warriors with hooded eyes all, their hackles stiff and bodies rigid, a deep and ponderous hostility about them. And they stripped the kits from her belly; they took her by her scruff and dragged her, hissing and spitting, to the heart of camp. Tidekit remembered how she screamed, the stricken expression, the stench of fear. For moons, that smell would haunt her and lift her hackles, the wails, the pleading drowned out by the furious snarls of the Clan.
It did not take much to break her.
Stood there before the Clan, before Sagestar and his self-perceived justice, they rent the words from her throat and spilled her treachery thereupon the stones. A traitor, a heathen, that was what she was, and her crime was high treason.
Before her kits and her mate, it was made known, and as Darkwave drank in the words in silence, as he stood there alongside daughter and son, shielding them in the thick plume of his tail, he denounced her, and so it was she was taken away, pulled down into the pits of their caves, to that wretched place where the lowly traitors rotted—in the loathsome Stone Caves. Tidekit did not see her for some moons afterward. She could not recall missing her much.
04 MOONS
56 Moons Ago, the Lost Heir… It was a cruel and burgeoning sickness what took him, a fire in the gut that gnawed its way through and made water his bowels. The stench of him reeked, the gauntness of him, the tired, rheumy eyes… Tidekit remembers how quickly the life had left him, how even the comforts of the poppy seeds did not ease his suffering.
"But I don't understand… he was fine a few sunrises ago…" and she remembers even now how the tears ran from her eyes and wetted her cheeks. It felt as if there was no end to them or the aching in her belly. Yet the father was still and cold. His face roused in it a cruel stiffness; the anger flamed in the stillness of his gaze.
Tidekit remembered hating him for that. The stoniness, the lack of tears. And when he left from that den, she hated him all the more.
05 MOONS
55 Moons Ago, the Broken One… Her body was brought up to them no later than the brother's had grown cold in the earth, and the sight of her could have twisted one's gut at the mere sight. Emaciated was she; the bones jutted from her flank, and gauntness marred her every feature. She had been dead for some time. Bugs and other such creatures which delighted at the taste of rotten flesh as eaten away at many ends of her, so the bone and flesh lay bare. And the stench… there was no accounting or describing the reek of her.
No sympathy chased those words, and no sympathy was needed.
They buried her where the crags overlooked the lake, a final kindness to a life that had stripped such things from her. And as they buried her, Tidekit did not utter any words in that muted vigil, only scorned each pawful of earth as it covered that decrepit old corpse.
And so it was that she saw the way of those who were too weak to prove their loyalty, who were fool enough to yield themselves to treason and treachery for a lost and dying cause. This was the future that awaited one who could not prove their loyalty—a life rotting away in stone cellars, forgotten to all, a blight to the Clan remembered only for being fool enough to back the legacy of a cat long dead.
Such a pitiful existence—and she did all in her power to ensure she did not do the same.
06-09 MOONS
54-51 Moons Ago, the Last Heir… With no son to carry his legacy, such burdens were foisted upon her shoulders. And so was the innocence stripped from her, the childhood marred with sadness and loss and sweltering grief. And so too was her life given a new purpose—to regain their standing within their Clan, prove the strength of Darkwave's lineage, and further denounce her mother's actions.
In her passing, she took all from them. Her father, named a traitor to his back though few were fool enough to utter such things to his face, no longer held the great reverence earned to him during the budding tensions and recurrent battles. And while his coat grew further burdened with its many scars, his standing was little bolstered by his efforts. Yet still, he worked doggedly, unceasing, and ensured that his daughter did the same.
Her training was bestowed to a tom of relatively low standing. His own family was ousted as Egretfeather supporters, and like herself and her father, his place in the Clan was tumultuous, threatened by every misstep. And so he made few and allowed her to make fewer, ever watchful of all that she did, beating in the nature of the Clan and a stalwart piousness that she would carry for moons to come and a dogged loyalty, and unshakeable and unwavering devoutness to her Clan and their leader.
And when her mentor did not have his claws in her, drilling her in her studies, in her faith and her fighting, her pounces and leaps and springs, it was her father who beat her over with his lessons. In the hush of night, he instilled a different school of learning. He taught her the cruel arts of hurting; he showed her the battle moves which could rend throats and more easily spill blood. He taught her the coldness and cruelty, and these too became deeply entrenched in her person—lessons she would never forget.
10-11 MOONS
50-49 Moons Ago, the Long War… The battles grew in their alacrity. With each day, the borders reeked with the stench overlaying of scent markers, and the patrols sent to lay them oft returned with shredded fur and fresh scars. Whispers of war echoed on the tongues of many. Gullheart, her mentor, whispered of great opportunity in the war. It was one of the few times, he whispered, when a cat could redeem themselves, for in war, it did not matter your station but the deftness of your claws and the cruelness of your bite, and both of these things Tidepaw was well-versed in.
So with anticipation, she strove for the day of that great redemption. As the border skirmishes grew in their regularity, the Clan shifted with impatience and tempers roused. Soon Sagestar met them with his own fierceness; he regaled them with promises of conquest, of new hunting grounds, and fresh land to set their paws. In them all, he planted a greed which knew no sating, and as the days passed and the planning began, the Clan filled itself with great purpose for the task, and a cool efficiency pronounced each movement and each act, so that when the battle came, they were ready, and when they struck, they did so without faltering and without mercy.
Tidepaw remembers the battle as it unfolded, the frenzied howls, the clash of bodies, the sinking of claws into flanks, the flurry of fur borne up into the wind. She remembered the many cats she faced, the bunching of their muzzles, the clash of their teeth before her face. She remembered Gullheart, the fierceness with which he fought, and how he fell beneath a wave of RedwoodClan warriors, killed in a sea of seething fur and bloodied swipes. Even now, she remembers his howls; like her mother's wails that day when she was dragged to be met with the Clan's justice, they haunted her. And when the battle was done, when she and her Clan stalked back from their siege, she left bloodied but alive and with the twisting feeling in her gut as she had felt all those moons ago.
She was given her warrior name before her twelfth moon. Tidechaser, that was what they called her, and in the admittance of her courage, of her father's own courage, for he, too, fought alongside her and conquered many a brute beneath his cumbersome paws, no one dared whisper behind the back of either, and instead bowed their heads in their presence, sharing with them words of kindness kept from them for many moons.
15 MOONS
45 Moons Ago, the Courting… It was only customary then, in her ascension to warriorhood, that she need address her other duties, and these too, her father made her aware of as the war stripped from them more and more lives. She was tasked then not only with proving herself on the battlefield but finding a strong suitor to bear her kits, for, in a time of such rampant war, the Clan had a great need for new blood, and who better than she, one of LichenClan's own most vital assets, to give such things to them?
21 MOONS
41 Moons Ago, the Only Son… Their partnering had been officious and bereft of love. No butterflies batted her heart, no flush reddened her cheeks; in the embracing of their bodies, there was only the stolid duty to their Clan, and when the swell of her belly came, it was not with love that she looked over the change but a quiet and watchful raptness. There lied her heirs, and already she destined for them a great purpose.
So when the first birthing throes struck her, she bore the burden and did not cry out, and when the deed was done, she was left with a single kit, yet he was strong and drank fiercely and did not yield to sickness. She named him Wispkit and brooded silently on his future.
25 MOONS
35 Moons Ago, the Desertion… But the son was far from the heir she anticipated. He did not belly in him the courage, the cruelness, the cunning, or the want for strength.
His way was timider, more reserved, and far away from the war, and at the mention of such things, he whimpered and whined and begged for kinder tales. It did not take long for her to acknowledge that he would never do for him what she had done for her father.
He was weak, insipid, and beyond saving, and so, when he was fully weaned from her teat, she left him there alone in his father's care and did not speak to him again, did not attend his ceremonies, and did not utter his name. And for her, her mate harbored a coldness toward her and her actions. He scorned her, and she him, and when the son grew old enough to receive their apprentice name, it was more than the son she turned her back on; it was her mate, too, whom she left.
30 MOONS
30 Moons Ago, the Revival… In the absence of a mate and heir, Tidechaser, against her father's wishes, returns to a life of servitude on the battlefield. Reclaiming her reputation as a warrior of prowess, in the coming thaw, as Minnowstar rallies another war effort against their fated enemies, Tidechaser joins the assault and adds her body to the force against RedwoodClan.
As the season's progress and leaf-fall arrives, a gathering bears an ominous omen as a strange cat interrupts the gathering, pleading for help amidst a cacophony of black-winged birds. Fueled by the warning, tensions stir, and the fighting grows in its alacrity. Whispers of heathens across the lake grow in their fervency.
40-50 MOONS
20-10 Moons Ago, the Great Sickness… The Moon Cave barred from the rivals, a battle brought into the heart of their foe's resting grounds, LichenClan's warmongering grows in its intensity, and in the midst of the chaos and bloodshed, Tidechaser once again solidifies her worth in the Clan. Her days as a queen are momentarily forgotten during a time of great need as she reclaims her mantle as one of LichenClan's most fearsome fighters.
Many wars wage in which LichenClan and their enemies push and pull against one another; not all battles are one, yet most are, and with the passage of each moon, Tidechaser watched on as her Clan reclaimed their old reputation—leaders of their island, an indomitable force to be feared. Yet unease stirs at the state of their leader when their long-standing deputy disappears, and whispers of StarClan parting from their hunting grounds reach the ears of the commoners.
Great change lilts on the tip of every tongue, yet in whose favor it is yet to be known.
60 MOONS
0 Moons Ago, the Bitter Company… New tensions unleash within the Clan. Rogues rest within their very chambers, RedwoodClan hounds their borders, and ThistleClan waits idly by in their sinister pine forest. Threats dog at every heel, danger preys in every shadow, and their leader, the once veritable Minnowstar, has seemingly fallen from grace in a recent fit of madness. Overlooking all from her comfortable station, Tidechaser begins to consider the future… and how best to ensure when that great change comes she will maintain her standing within the clan.
60 Moons Ago, the Great Swell… As winter ebbed into the start of spring and the air grew warm with the promise of new-leaf, so too did spirits rouse and the restless wants with them. And as bellies filled on the newfound abundance of prey, as the winter famine ceased from their bone-pricked hides and gave flesh to their gaunt frames, war beckoned and could be felt throughout that idle island, freshly thawed. Yet none felt it as Darkwave did, as he loomed over his mate and their two surviving kits—a son and a daughter both—and two others, born lifeless and cold, discarded, and forgotten, lost before their very conception, never to breathe the air or taste their mother's milk.
Yet it did not matter if they were lost, for two heirs yet lived and drank doggedly at their mother's teat, ever in their likeness, fierce even at birth as they jostled and pushed. Yet the son was always weaker, always smaller than the daughter, who drank most fiercely of all and jealously guarded her teat. And as his mate stooped and lapped their heads, weary and tired and hunger-stricken from a long, hard winter, she bid him name them, and so he did.
So it was that Tidekit and Cragkit came into the world, and Marshkit and Riverkit left it.
02 MOONS
58 Moons Ago, the Quiet Lull… They took her at sunrise. Veritable warriors with hooded eyes all, their hackles stiff and bodies rigid, a deep and ponderous hostility about them. And they stripped the kits from her belly; they took her by her scruff and dragged her, hissing and spitting, to the heart of camp. Tidekit remembered how she screamed, the stricken expression, the stench of fear. For moons, that smell would haunt her and lift her hackles, the wails, the pleading drowned out by the furious snarls of the Clan.
It did not take much to break her.
Stood there before the Clan, before Sagestar and his self-perceived justice, they rent the words from her throat and spilled her treachery thereupon the stones. A traitor, a heathen, that was what she was, and her crime was high treason.
Before her kits and her mate, it was made known, and as Darkwave drank in the words in silence, as he stood there alongside daughter and son, shielding them in the thick plume of his tail, he denounced her, and so it was she was taken away, pulled down into the pits of their caves, to that wretched place where the lowly traitors rotted—in the loathsome Stone Caves. Tidekit did not see her for some moons afterward. She could not recall missing her much.
04 MOONS
56 Moons Ago, the Lost Heir… It was a cruel and burgeoning sickness what took him, a fire in the gut that gnawed its way through and made water his bowels. The stench of him reeked, the gauntness of him, the tired, rheumy eyes… Tidekit remembers how quickly the life had left him, how even the comforts of the poppy seeds did not ease his suffering.
"But I don't understand… he was fine a few sunrises ago…" and she remembers even now how the tears ran from her eyes and wetted her cheeks. It felt as if there was no end to them or the aching in her belly. Yet the father was still and cold. His face roused in it a cruel stiffness; the anger flamed in the stillness of his gaze.
Tidekit remembered hating him for that. The stoniness, the lack of tears. And when he left from that den, she hated him all the more.
05 MOONS
55 Moons Ago, the Broken One… Her body was brought up to them no later than the brother's had grown cold in the earth, and the sight of her could have twisted one's gut at the mere sight. Emaciated was she; the bones jutted from her flank, and gauntness marred her every feature. She had been dead for some time. Bugs and other such creatures which delighted at the taste of rotten flesh as eaten away at many ends of her, so the bone and flesh lay bare. And the stench… there was no accounting or describing the reek of her.
"Dead for some time. No one knows when. Went out quiet-like. Starved, more 'n likely… guards say she stopped eating her rations. It happens. Some are too weak to shoulder the consequences of their sins…"
No sympathy chased those words, and no sympathy was needed.
They buried her where the crags overlooked the lake, a final kindness to a life that had stripped such things from her. And as they buried her, Tidekit did not utter any words in that muted vigil, only scorned each pawful of earth as it covered that decrepit old corpse.
And so it was that she saw the way of those who were too weak to prove their loyalty, who were fool enough to yield themselves to treason and treachery for a lost and dying cause. This was the future that awaited one who could not prove their loyalty—a life rotting away in stone cellars, forgotten to all, a blight to the Clan remembered only for being fool enough to back the legacy of a cat long dead.
Such a pitiful existence—and she did all in her power to ensure she did not do the same.
06-09 MOONS
54-51 Moons Ago, the Last Heir… With no son to carry his legacy, such burdens were foisted upon her shoulders. And so was the innocence stripped from her, the childhood marred with sadness and loss and sweltering grief. And so too was her life given a new purpose—to regain their standing within their Clan, prove the strength of Darkwave's lineage, and further denounce her mother's actions.
In her passing, she took all from them. Her father, named a traitor to his back though few were fool enough to utter such things to his face, no longer held the great reverence earned to him during the budding tensions and recurrent battles. And while his coat grew further burdened with its many scars, his standing was little bolstered by his efforts. Yet still, he worked doggedly, unceasing, and ensured that his daughter did the same.
Her training was bestowed to a tom of relatively low standing. His own family was ousted as Egretfeather supporters, and like herself and her father, his place in the Clan was tumultuous, threatened by every misstep. And so he made few and allowed her to make fewer, ever watchful of all that she did, beating in the nature of the Clan and a stalwart piousness that she would carry for moons to come and a dogged loyalty, and unshakeable and unwavering devoutness to her Clan and their leader.
And when her mentor did not have his claws in her, drilling her in her studies, in her faith and her fighting, her pounces and leaps and springs, it was her father who beat her over with his lessons. In the hush of night, he instilled a different school of learning. He taught her the cruel arts of hurting; he showed her the battle moves which could rend throats and more easily spill blood. He taught her the coldness and cruelty, and these too became deeply entrenched in her person—lessons she would never forget.
10-11 MOONS
50-49 Moons Ago, the Long War… The battles grew in their alacrity. With each day, the borders reeked with the stench overlaying of scent markers, and the patrols sent to lay them oft returned with shredded fur and fresh scars. Whispers of war echoed on the tongues of many. Gullheart, her mentor, whispered of great opportunity in the war. It was one of the few times, he whispered, when a cat could redeem themselves, for in war, it did not matter your station but the deftness of your claws and the cruelness of your bite, and both of these things Tidepaw was well-versed in.
So with anticipation, she strove for the day of that great redemption. As the border skirmishes grew in their regularity, the Clan shifted with impatience and tempers roused. Soon Sagestar met them with his own fierceness; he regaled them with promises of conquest, of new hunting grounds, and fresh land to set their paws. In them all, he planted a greed which knew no sating, and as the days passed and the planning began, the Clan filled itself with great purpose for the task, and a cool efficiency pronounced each movement and each act, so that when the battle came, they were ready, and when they struck, they did so without faltering and without mercy.
Tidepaw remembers the battle as it unfolded, the frenzied howls, the clash of bodies, the sinking of claws into flanks, the flurry of fur borne up into the wind. She remembered the many cats she faced, the bunching of their muzzles, the clash of their teeth before her face. She remembered Gullheart, the fierceness with which he fought, and how he fell beneath a wave of RedwoodClan warriors, killed in a sea of seething fur and bloodied swipes. Even now, she remembers his howls; like her mother's wails that day when she was dragged to be met with the Clan's justice, they haunted her. And when the battle was done, when she and her Clan stalked back from their siege, she left bloodied but alive and with the twisting feeling in her gut as she had felt all those moons ago.
She was given her warrior name before her twelfth moon. Tidechaser, that was what they called her, and in the admittance of her courage, of her father's own courage, for he, too, fought alongside her and conquered many a brute beneath his cumbersome paws, no one dared whisper behind the back of either, and instead bowed their heads in their presence, sharing with them words of kindness kept from them for many moons.
15 MOONS
45 Moons Ago, the Courting… It was only customary then, in her ascension to warriorhood, that she need address her other duties, and these too, her father made her aware of as the war stripped from them more and more lives. She was tasked then not only with proving herself on the battlefield but finding a strong suitor to bear her kits, for, in a time of such rampant war, the Clan had a great need for new blood, and who better than she, one of LichenClan's own most vital assets, to give such things to them?
21 MOONS
41 Moons Ago, the Only Son… Their partnering had been officious and bereft of love. No butterflies batted her heart, no flush reddened her cheeks; in the embracing of their bodies, there was only the stolid duty to their Clan, and when the swell of her belly came, it was not with love that she looked over the change but a quiet and watchful raptness. There lied her heirs, and already she destined for them a great purpose.
So when the first birthing throes struck her, she bore the burden and did not cry out, and when the deed was done, she was left with a single kit, yet he was strong and drank fiercely and did not yield to sickness. She named him Wispkit and brooded silently on his future.
25 MOONS
35 Moons Ago, the Desertion… But the son was far from the heir she anticipated. He did not belly in him the courage, the cruelness, the cunning, or the want for strength.
His way was timider, more reserved, and far away from the war, and at the mention of such things, he whimpered and whined and begged for kinder tales. It did not take long for her to acknowledge that he would never do for him what she had done for her father.
He was weak, insipid, and beyond saving, and so, when he was fully weaned from her teat, she left him there alone in his father's care and did not speak to him again, did not attend his ceremonies, and did not utter his name. And for her, her mate harbored a coldness toward her and her actions. He scorned her, and she him, and when the son grew old enough to receive their apprentice name, it was more than the son she turned her back on; it was her mate, too, whom she left.
30 MOONS
30 Moons Ago, the Revival… In the absence of a mate and heir, Tidechaser, against her father's wishes, returns to a life of servitude on the battlefield. Reclaiming her reputation as a warrior of prowess, in the coming thaw, as Minnowstar rallies another war effort against their fated enemies, Tidechaser joins the assault and adds her body to the force against RedwoodClan.
As the season's progress and leaf-fall arrives, a gathering bears an ominous omen as a strange cat interrupts the gathering, pleading for help amidst a cacophony of black-winged birds. Fueled by the warning, tensions stir, and the fighting grows in its alacrity. Whispers of heathens across the lake grow in their fervency.
40-50 MOONS
20-10 Moons Ago, the Great Sickness… The Moon Cave barred from the rivals, a battle brought into the heart of their foe's resting grounds, LichenClan's warmongering grows in its intensity, and in the midst of the chaos and bloodshed, Tidechaser once again solidifies her worth in the Clan. Her days as a queen are momentarily forgotten during a time of great need as she reclaims her mantle as one of LichenClan's most fearsome fighters.
Many wars wage in which LichenClan and their enemies push and pull against one another; not all battles are one, yet most are, and with the passage of each moon, Tidechaser watched on as her Clan reclaimed their old reputation—leaders of their island, an indomitable force to be feared. Yet unease stirs at the state of their leader when their long-standing deputy disappears, and whispers of StarClan parting from their hunting grounds reach the ears of the commoners.
Great change lilts on the tip of every tongue, yet in whose favor it is yet to be known.
60 MOONS
0 Moons Ago, the Bitter Company… New tensions unleash within the Clan. Rogues rest within their very chambers, RedwoodClan hounds their borders, and ThistleClan waits idly by in their sinister pine forest. Threats dog at every heel, danger preys in every shadow, and their leader, the once veritable Minnowstar, has seemingly fallen from grace in a recent fit of madness. Overlooking all from her comfortable station, Tidechaser begins to consider the future… and how best to ensure when that great change comes she will maintain her standing within the clan.
