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Riverstone Ref — Description
My depressed little kitty, living in a storyline based off of the premise of a corrupt starclan/clan society as a whole. This is his full backstory(warning for ableism, homophobia, self-harm, suicide):
Riverstone was born without the use of his hind legs. Therefore, he was apprenticed as a medicine cat. However, this was not the role he wanted. He desperately tried to prove to the clan that he was capable of hunting and fighting, coming up with a series of unique and effective hunting and fighting tactics, to get the leader to give him a warrior’s apprenticeship. However, no one really cared and he stayed in the medicine den anyways. This proved not just to be a role he disliked, but a role that would actively make his life miserable. As a warrior, you provided for your clan. You helped it. Sure, if there was a battle, you would hurt other cats, but killing was against the warrior code. You never really had blood on your hands. But as a medicine cat, all the healing was on you. That cat that died of greencough might have died no matter what, but maybe if you’d tried harder, been better, she would’ve lived. Maybe it’s your fault that elder died. Maybe that injury would’ve been fatal anyways, but how could you be sure? Every time a cat in the clan died, Riverstone felt as though there was blood on his paws. The greencough epidemics and deadly battles made it even worse, however. Do you treat the apprentice or the senior warrior’s wounds first? How bad is it if you pay most attention to treating the cats you’ve had more positive experiences with? The leader has nine lives, should we or shouldn’t we treat her first? What about the deputy?
But throughout all of this, there were two cats who kept him going. The first was a strange starclan cat that visited him in his dreams, helping him learn and perfect hunting and fighting techniques, saying that if he got good enough, he could finally prove to the clan he was fit to be a warrior and free himself from this hell. The cat never told him her name, and he thought that the forests of starclan were strangely desolate and dark, but he never really questioned it.

The second cat was Sagestreak, the light of his life. The two had become friends as apprentices, and Sagestreak had been the only cat to assist him in his unsuccessful quest to become a warrior. The had become much more than just friends over the years, but they were afraid to tell anyone because even though there was no way on earth or in starclan they could have kits, they still weren’t sure if the clan would let them be together. Even if Riverstone was a warrior, how would the clan react to a relationship between two toms? It certainly wasn’t something he or Sagestreak had heard of before. They just knew they loved each other, and that was that.

One day, however, things got bad. Another epidemic was spreading through the clan, and Riverstone, along with Sagestreak, a warrior named Condorsky, and a few others went on a trip beyond clan borders to find and much needed herb. Riverstone had briefly gone off on his own to collect another bunch of it he’d seen further off, next to a thunderpath, when Condorsky suddenly attacked him! He told Riverstone that he’d found out about his relationship with Sagestreak that that he would kill him for breaking the warrior code with such an unnatural relationship. He repeatedly tried to throw Riverstone into the path of a monster, and eventually, using one of the tactics the strange starclan cat had taught him, Riverstone managed to throw Condorsky away from him… straight into a monster. Even though Condorsky had just tried to kill him, Riverstone was horrified. Sure, he’d had cats die from injury or infection or disease before… but now he’d killed a cat with his own claws. The self-hatred and grief he often felt got worse, and he started hurting himself more than unusual. And then, one night, it reached a climax.

When he woke up, he was somewhere unfamiliar, and he could see through himself. He was dead. He was in the same place he’d always trained with that starclan cat… but if he looked into the distance, he could see a brighter place, with stars in the sky. That was when he realized… this wasn’t starclan. The cat he’d been training with was a dark forest cat. But for once, something told him that he didn’t deserve this. He’d never tried to hurt anyone. He’d never been malicious. He’d never realized he was training in the dark forest. This wasn’t his fault. He believed this even more strongly when he traveled to the border between the dark forest and starclan and noticed Condorsky on the other side. For several months, Riverstone roamed alone in the dark forest, occasionally trying to talk to cats he stumbled across out of sheer loneliness. Most of the conversations with them ended in death threats or talking about how great murder was, but it was still better than nothing. Then one day, finally, he saw Sagestreak in starclan. He felt a little guilty about being glad his boyfriend was dead, but now he had a cat he knew, who could possibly convince starclan of the mistake they made. Sagestreak was absolutely horrified to find his boyfriend was in the dark forest, and quickly went off to find out who had made such a huge mistake. When he came back, he was trembling with rage as to told Riverstone that this had been no mistake. Apparently, Riverstone had “broken the warrior code by taking a mate, killed one of his fellow clanmates, disrespected his clanmates by not conforming to the role they had given him, and further harmed them by leaving them without a medicine cat.” Sagestreak vowed that if the rest of starclan wouldn’t help him get his boyfriend out of hell, he’d find someone else who could.

Ultimately, he did. There were old cats, old cats who had learned the ways of the spirit world and how to manipulate it. Some of them had been willing to help. Just as some of them managed to free Riverstone, though, several starclan cats took notice and began chasing after them. Ultimately, they were all chased beyond both starclan and the dark forest. However, no one was done. If starclan had put one innocent cat in the dark forest, there might be others. And surely there were more cats in starclan who questioned what the ones in the charge were doing. And maybe, just maybe, Riverstone could help prevent living cats from having the same life as he did. They called their group the gray forest, neither bright like starclan nor dark like the place of no stars. And soon, a small group of cats would start seeing a translucent gray cat with a tired, yet almost hopeful expression on his face in their dreams…

anyways this took over an hour to write