Vervainroot

LichenClan

a blue-and-white tabby tom w/ blue eyes.

A rather unremarkable tom. Despite being firstborn, Vervainkit is nothing if not ordinary. In stature, he is neither tall nor short; he towers over only the most diminutive of his peers, and even then would seem smaller than he is as a result of his poor posture and frequent stooping. He has no broad shoulders to boast or anything in the way of stockiness. No leanness or hardness of body, only a stubborn affliction of kitten fat that will plague him well into his adolescence.

His features are equally unimpressive. Plain, if not homely. His muzzle is somewhat smushed, his eyes close and too large for so small a head as his. Even his ears seem odd: small upon his head and disfigured though unwilling to commit to the folds which are his mother’s most defining feature.

In color, he is even more unimpressive. His furs are an austere blue, broken by flares of white at the muzzle, throat, and paws. His eyes are a queer greenish blue. Strange, staring, and again, far too large for a so small a countenance.

Positive Traits: intuitive, dutiful, calculative, methodical.
Neutral Traits: impressionable, patient, penitent, crude.
Negative Traits: volatile, diffident, subservient, careless.

If one were to compare them, Vervainpaw is nothing like the cats in the stories. He is not gallant, brave, or even handsome but timid, erratic, and careless. He possesses a sharp and even cunning mind but an overthinking one, prone to submit to the hypotheticals it creates in the absence of genuine conversation. He is particularly susceptible to the temptations of others should they offer him some small comfort, and he is known to be as simpering and subservient as a dormouse.

Yet for all his passiveness, he is smart enough—keen when he wants to be and duly aware of all the goings-on about him. He is what he considers to be the right amount of terrified of his grandmother, yet deeply desires her respect and approval, nonetheless, while of his peers, he feels a dormant sort of detachment and disapproval for the dismissiveness with which they treat him. To those who do not come from distinguished lines, Vervainpaw inflicts the cruelness and flippant nature he endures at the hands of his betters. He is crude and careless with those of lower status, lowering his guard and the false front that he hides behind. It is among these individuals of the lower caste he is most comfortable; cats whose word against his means very little and who he feels he can be, for those sparing moments, himself around—whether in a good way or otherwise, is no great concern to him. Yet when he is around his betters, he is obedient, malleable, patient, and calculative, always waiting to prove himself to be more than his dead mother’s castaway.

Basic Fear(s): Losing the approval of Caveflower and the privileges that come with maintaining her favor.
Basic Desire(s): Above all else, Vervainpaw desires the comforts that status provides him. The more he has, the more privileges he qualifies for, and the happier he feels he will be.
Key Motivation(s): Beyond the privileges, Vervainpaw is primarily fueled by the validation of his peers. He is immensely proud of his inheritance, however, removed from Caveflower’s own proud lines, and enjoys the extra considerations owed to him due to his ties to her. Knowing this, he cannot help but hunger for more and a higher place within the family unit that would offer him the consideration and fondness of his kin.

✦✦ Season 2023, Green Leaf || Born to Rotflower and Driftfeather, LichenClan welcomes a litter of three into their ranks: Gustkit, Crocuskit, and Vervainkit. Overwhelmed by the responsibilities of her young and disillusioned with her duties as a queen, though she nurses and cleans them, Rotflower quickly withdraws her affections both from her mate and her children, leaving the bulk of their care in the paws of their father and other queens.

✦✦ Season 2023, Leaf Fall || Beyond feeding times, Rotflower is not a constant in their lives, yet Vervainkit can only think fondly of her. He yearns for his mother’s attention and grasps hungrily upon it whenever it can be gotten, though it is not long before even those small doses leave him unsatisfied. Despite his father’s efforts to alleviate the strain of his mother’s absence, Vervainkit’s timid nature often excludes him from the antics his brothers’ and father partake in. He spends the bulk of his days in the nursery and soon attracts the attention of his grandmother, Caveflower. It does not take long for a fondness to brew between them. Vervainpaw deeply values his grandmother’s presence, viewing it as a substitute for his mother’s absence, and it is not long before he finds herself neatly wrapped around her paw. And so, when she asks him to play the role of the wounded kit, sending Darkwave underground, he thinks nothing of it when, in exchange, he is granted the paw of a she-kit who has caught his fancy. Not even as tensions rise between his people and a rift grows amongst their rank does he think very much of it, though he does begin to crave more such gifts as the one given to him that day.

✦✦ Season 2023, Leaf Bare || A secret meeting is held before the Moon Pool in which he and his kin are dunked beneath the waters of StarClan and granted passage among their star-fearing ranks. During the ceremony, Gustkit nearly drowns, and the fluid he chokes down leads to the eventual development of pneumonia in his lungs. Despite Lilacmist’s efforts to revive the kit, he passes suddenly, leaving only two kits to attend the apprentice ceremony that awaited them the next day. As Vervainkit and Crocuskit accept their new titles of Vervainpaw and Crocuspaw, they are passed over to their new mentors, Vervainpaw’s own being a worn war hero by the name of Flashfang—a fact that might have delighted him if only his mother were there to see it. Disgruntled by Rotflower’s absence, Vervainpaw returns from his outing crestfallen and unhappy, though the sight of his mother retreating to the glade draws his eye. Upon pursuing her, he witnesses her death at the paws of another, one whose face, in his shock, his mind has forced him to forget.