Original Post: Ember, January 28, 2017
Hello everyone! I hope you’ve had a great start of the New Year and have even more fun on the horizon! Before we dive right into the bulk of this Monthly Meow, I have a few announcements to make. Firstly, our clan lists are looking rather pathetic: MoonClan has 92 characters, NightClan has 69, DawnClan has 90, and SunClan has 78. This just boils down to how few active members we have right now, so please, spread the word about the website. If you are at all interested in helping to advertise the website on other forums’ ad boxes and whatnot, please PM me and I can give you all the information necessary. As well, if you have suggestions for active roleplays that we should seek an affiliation with, I’d love to hear about them. The most successful thing, however, has always been through members directly referring other roleplayers or Warriors fans to the website, so please tell your friends—offline and on! Unless we receive an unmanageable wave of new members, memberships are scheduled to remain open for at least the next month.
The Monthly Meows over the next couple of months are going to investigate how Warrior Cats of the Forests fan-created Warrior Cats universe compares to the universe of the original books. I have five or possibly six entries planned, but for this first month I will focus on The Warrior Code. The history of the Warrior Code itself is inconsistent in the books; so while Secrets of the Clans states that the rules were all created with the foundation of the four and later five clans, the Code of the Clans tells the stories of how each rule was formed following different events even generations after the founding leaders. This website is more similar to the Secrets of the Clans version, whereby StarClan granted the rules to Moonstar and ordered him to form a clan with that knowledge. The Code has not been altered over time on this website, except for when clans temporarily rejected the code in favor of a new one, such as during Weepingstar and Poppystar’s rule. As well, there are a number of rules that are respected in clan life but do not officially appear in the code and rules of the code function more as values to aspire to rather than laws in and of themselves.
One last note: in order to write this series of Monthly Meows I’ve reread the first warrior cats book (Into the Wild). If you want to check out the passages I’ve referenced please note that I am using the Avon paperback 2004 American edition, so the pages might not match up exactly if you have a different edition. As well, I’ve used the Warrior Cats Wiki and my own somewhat sketchy memory of the other books, so please comment below if anything I say here is wrong or you have anything to add. As one extra caveat, The Warrior Cats canon universe is notoriously riddled with contradictions and continuity errors and is far more massive than I could hope to fully explore, so I’ve limited these Monthly Meows to primarily focusing on the first six books published. This fact is not particularly relevant for this first Monthly Meow, but don’t worry, there will be plenty of chances to crack open your books later on. This is also your spoiler warning, so if you haven’t read the warriors books and don’t want me to ruin anything, give this Monthly Meow a pass. Without further ado, onto the code!
Defend your Clan, even with your life. You may have friendships with cats from other Clans, but your loyalty must remain to your Clan, as one day you may meet them in battle.
While the first half of this rule is mentioned often on this website and cats’ attitudes toward the importance of defending their clan when it is directly under attack are similar across this website and the original books, the second half of this rule seems almost irrelevant on this website. Purely platonic cross-clan friendships are few and far-between and those that do occasionally appear are either extremely fleeting, or eventually culminate in one of the cats moving to the other cat’s clan. For that reason, cross-clan friendships are broadly discouraged, even if the cats only interact during gatherings or other appropriate settings.
Do not hunt or trespass on another Clan's territory.
This rule is the same across both the books and our website, but how and when cats break it is different. While crossing borders in the books is often a result of an apprentices’ carelessness or a coordinated clan effort (as in the case of ShadowClan demanding hunting rights in the other clans’ territories in Into the Wild), on our website it’s largely the result of a few rogue warriors who knowingly choose to ignore the borders against their leaders’ wishes. While leaders and careless apprentices are occasionally involved, it’s less common than in the books.
Elders, queens, and kits must be fed before apprentices and warriors. Unless they have permission, apprentices may not eat until they have hunted to feed the elders. If any warrior or apprentice is sick or injured, they may eat while the elders, queens, and kits are eating.
The ideal of warriors and apprentices eating after the non-hunting members of the clan is consistent across the books and roleplay, but the reality is that the process of dividing food is far less organized on the roleplay than it is in the book. It’s just impractical for a member to have their character ask for permission every time they eat, especially if the player doesn’t have a warrior of their own they can have their apprentices ask.
Prey is killed only to be eaten. Give thanks to StarClan for its life.
This rule comes up more often in the books, where the idea of killing prey for sport or prestige comes up more often, such as when Lionheart condemns Firestar, then Rusty, for chasing mice for fun or when RiverClan and ShadowClan form TigerClan and kill prey to build a pile of bones. I actually can’t think of an instance on this website when, even if the prey was caught to show off, it didn’t eventually end up in someone’s mouth. There certainly haven’t been any instances of this on a large scale.
The second half of the rule is spottier, while the warriors wiki alludes to a specific blessing that warriors might have said over their prey, but this doesn’t appear in the books to my memory nor is it a common occurrence on this roleplay.
A kit must be at least six moons old to become an apprentice.
This rule is broken occasionally in the books, as when Bluestar named Cinderpelt and Brackenfur as apprentices before six moons and Brokenstar’s more extreme practices of naming cats as full warriors as early as five moons old. It is, however, looked down upon. The rule is fairly irrelevant on your roleplay, simply due to how our aging system works. For organizational reasons aging is kept consistent, so anyone receiving their apprentice name is by default six moons old.
Newly appointed warriors will keep a silent vigil for one night after receiving their warrior name.
This practice is taken extremely seriously in the books; on page 271 of Into the Wild, Firestar refused to break his vigil even though talking to Bluestar immediately after receiving his warrior name would have given him a chance to expose Tigerclaw’s treachery. However, on this website, the practice has been all but entirely dropped. I remember some warriors enduring their vigil a few years ago, but can’t think of any instances of the ritual being enforced on this website recently. Personally, I think it would be cool if we brought this practice back, even though some cats would inevitably miss it because they are busy or their owners are not online when their warrior name is announced.
A cat cannot be made deputy without having mentored at least one apprentice.
This rule is fairly shaky in the books, as currently training an apprentice counts. On this website, it’s ignored, as members often create a new character from scratch for deputy positions.
The deputy will become Clan leader when the leader dies, retires or is exiled.
There isn’t much to say about this rule, it’s consistently followed in both the books and in the roleplay. Occasionally we have mix-ups between leaders and deputies that wouldn’t happen in the books, for out-of-character reasons, but these don’t tend to affect the actual succession of deputy and leader.
After the death or retirement of the deputy, the new deputy must be chosen before moonhigh.
This rule is broken occasionally in the books, such as when Firestar failed to name a new deputy after Greystripe disappeared for moons, but has been entirely thrown away on this website due to out-of-character considerations. While I try and have deputies set up before hand, this isn’t always possible as members may back out of the position after they’ve accepted it, or leaders or deputies unexpectedly die or leave the clans. As well, the actual passage of time on the roleplay is inconsistent and there is no set time when “moonhigh” takes place.
A Gathering of all four Clans is held at the full moon during a truce that lasts for the night. There shall be no fighting among Clans at this time.
The Gathering truce is strictly adhered to in the books as a result of the clans’ close interactions with StarClan, but Gatherings are more an opportunity for fighting than anything else on this website due to the distance between StarClan and the clans. I’ll explore the clan’s relationship with StarClan in great detail in a later Monthly Meow.
Boundaries must be checked and marked daily. Challenge all trespassing cats.
While border-checking is a much more formal process in the books, with each patrol officially sent out by the deputy and treated as a serious occasion (on pg. 93 of Into the Wild the rest of the clan is relieved to see a patrol returning). In contrast, warriors in our patrol are rarely even acknowledged when they return from patrols. The process of sending out patrols is also far more formal in the books, where the deputy handles all of the assignments for a day and cats don’t just leave the camp when they feel like it.
Whether all trespassing cats are actually “challenged” is another issue. Cats from other clans are usually greeted with suspicion, but loners and other non-clan outsiders are usually treated with more curiosity than anything else. There are exceptions to this, depending on individual characters’ personalities and the specific circumstance of meeting, but the norm in the books to attack outsiders on sight has definitely been discarded in this roleplay.
No warrior can neglect a kit in pain or danger, even if the kit is from a different Clan.
This rule seems to be much more of an ideal than a hard and fast law in the books, as there are so many stories of kits being kidnapped or outright neglected by enemy clans. On our website, kits escape from the camp less frequently, but cats do outright attack kits during battles and we had an entire war started when a handful of NightClanners kidnapped kits from the other clans.
The word of the Clan leader is the warrior code.
While cats cite this rule occasionally in our roleplay, cats on this website criticize their leaders much more openly than their canon counterparts. In fact, more leaders are challenged by entire factions of their clan than aren’t on this website. While the warrior code does allow cats to challenge leaders who are in direct conflict with the code, cats on this website challenge leaders over ideology and actions that don’t explicitly break the warrior code. For example, both DawnClan nationalists and traditionalists have aspects of the warrior code to their side and thus the clan leader is going to be in conflict with the code no matter how they act. This more complicated relationship to the code and leaders may just stem from Warriors being a series aimed for children, while our roleplay tends to have an older audience and therefore dip into morally ambiguous territory more frequently.
An honorable warrior does not need to kill other cats to win their battles, unless they are outside the warrior code or if it is necessary for self-defense.
This rule is something of a can of worms, as what is defined as outside the warrior code or as self-defense will vary from cat to cat and clan to clan. Even putting aside these considerations, this rule is still more respected in the books than it is on this website. While often times in the books the clans are content with simply exiling cats, such as when ThunderClan and ShadowClan ran off Brokenstar, cats on this roleplay much prefer to execute their enemies. In fact, when Geckostar refused to execute Weepingstar and his fanatic followers in favor of banishment, MoonClan almost rejected her leadership entirely.
A warrior rejects the soft life of a kittypet.
What exactly this rule means is never made clear in the books. Are warriors not allowed to accept human food, including trash, are they not allowed to stay in human-made shelters, or is it simply not accepting direct help from twolegs in favor of an independent way of life? If we interpret this rule strictly, NightClan is clearly in violation of this rule, but more accepting readings make this rule almost irrelevant for our website. Cats almost never interact with humans directly, instead ignoring them or making the most of human-created environments, and even the sub-plot in which DawnClan apprentices began to beg food off of humans never really panned out.
Each Clan has the right to be proud and independent, but in times of trouble they must forget their boundaries and fight side by side to protect the four. Each Clan must help the others so that no Clan will fall.
This rule occasionally becomes relevant in the books, such as when ShadowClan drove out WindClan or the clans had to relocate, but is used much more liberally on the website. As well as extreme situations, as when MoonClan and StormClan fought against Raven’s army to preserve the clans as an entity, the rule is invoked whenever an entire clan is faced with some issue, such as when SunClan demanded shelter in MoonClan during a blizzard or during DawnClan’s recent famine. Whether the clans actually come through for each other is another matter, of course, and the clans both in the books and on this website waver between respecting and ignoring this rule depending on their own personal circumstances.
Unofficial Rules:
Medicine cats may not have a mate or kits.
Canon attitudes toward medicine cats having kits are consistently strict, not that that stops medicine cats from getting away with hidden litters left and right. Medicine cats also have kits on this website, but depending on the clans’ current political climate, it is more or less of an accepted part of clan life. This likely also has to do with the clan’s diminished relationship to StarClan, which will be discussed extensively in a later Monthly Meow.
Kits must stay in camp until they are apprenticed and are not allowed to hunt.
Kits very rarely are allowed outside the camp on our website, but they are hinted to regularly leave the camp with their mothers in the books (pg 109). Personally, I think it would be interesting if the clans did start allowing queens to take their kits just outside the camp and would make the instances in which kits are killed by foxes or whatnot more realistic. This was part of the reason why I created the new Sunwarm Rocks landmark in DawnClan, where queens could be allowed to take their kits.
The safety of the Clan is more important than the safety of one cat.
There isn’t much to say about this rule, it seems to be more understood than actually articulated by the canon characters. The degree to which cats actually follow it on this website varies from clan to Clan, with NightClan far on the side that everyone’s responsible for themselves alone, SunClan upholding clan before individual, and MoonClan and DawnClan wavering between caring for themselves individually and their loved ones, their leader, and the clan as a whole.
Clans must not unite together to drive out another Clan.
This rule barely bears mentioning on this website, as for primarily out-of-character reasons the clans have never attempted to entirely destroy another. MoonClan and StormClan merged, but all of the StormClanners agreed to this in order to assure their own survival after their numbers dwindled in Raven’s War. However, in the canon this rule is mentioned several times, usually when ShadowClan and whoever they’re allied with starts eyeing other clans’ territories.
Clans must not force another Clan to share territory.
This rule has actually been broken on this website, but only when natural disasters forced clans out of their own territories. However, the official rule stating that “each Clan must help the others so that no Clan will fall” provides an exception to this rule. In the canon series, this rule became relevant in situations such as when ShadowClan ran WindClan out of their territory and forced RiverClan to allow ShadowClan warriors on their territory, but no such situation has yet to arise. All territory sharing agreements have been mutual, or only a portion of the territory was taken in battle and the entire clan wasn’t forced to allow others on their territory.
Enemy patrols must not attack cats if they are on a mission all four Clans agree on.
Again, this makes sense in canon where cats actually go on missions, but doesn’t matter for our website. When the website was created we actually did intend for there to be missions, but as time has passed and the website has grown, I’m not comfortable with the idea of selecting a handful of members and setting their characters off for a large plot point that other members can’t participate in.
Cats cannot eat when going to the Moonstone or Moonpool to speak with StarClan.
The wording of this rule is fairly misleading, as only those cats who are actually speaking with StarClan cannot eat, which includes traveling herbs. Those accompanying the StarClan-speaker are not permitted to eat prey, only traveling herbs (pg 167). This rule is never explained and doesn’t seem to have much of a practical purpose beyond possibly showing reverence to StarClan or creating a ritual surrounding contact. As for this website, this rule has been dropped entirely. Traveling herbs are barely mentioned and not a hard and fast requirement before traveling to the Moonstone.
I’d love to hear any thoughts you guys have regarding the differences between the interpretation of the Code across this roleplay and the canon universe, as well as any suggestions for future book vs. roleplay Monthly Meows. The tentative schedule will be that next month will focus on naming conventions, then clan demographics, and in April I’ll compare the clans themselves and their territories, then common practices and relationships to other animals, and to wrap it up –hopefully with the help of members who have read the series more recently than I have- a big blog entry comparing plots from this roleplay to canon plots books.
MoonClan
Apprentices:
Thistlekit, Crystalkit, Icekit, Loyalkit, Moonkit, Saki, Peonykit, Cleopatra S: Mid February
Bluepaw, Pandapaw, Sneakpaw, Quietpaw: Early February
Warriors:
Whisperingpaw, Mamelukepaw: Mid February
Ravenpaw: Late February
Elders: Twistedthorn, Oakleaves, Manikintail, Aphrodite, Robinshell
Deaths: Mantis-strike, Sennagaze, Vervaintongue
NightClan
Warriors:
Sinpaw, Hauntedpaw, Stolenpaw, Genocidepaw: Early February
Bluepaw: Mid February
Elders: Scarletstar, Vidar, Kingfish, Threelegs, Devilspawn
DawnClan
Apprentices:
Doekit, Lionkit, Miskit, Cedarkit, Hauntingkit, Crystalkit: Early February
Restlesskit, Firstkit, Nightkit, Vinekit: Mid February
Warriors:
Fuzzypaw, Bouncepaw, Knightpaw, Aurorapaw, Shallowpaw, Loudpaw, Silverpaw, Spiritpaw, Paintedpaw: Early February
Fallingpaw, Thunderpaw, Firepaw, Blackpaw: Mid February
Palepaw: Late February
Elders: Foxflight, Crossbuck, Price
SunClan
Apprentices:
Rabbitkit, Ashkit, Tawnykit, Stonekit, Dusk-kit, Lake-kit, Runningkit: Early February
Gorsekit, Goldenkit: Mid February
Warriors:
Thistlepaw, Cacklingpaw: Early December
Briarpaw, Fogpaw, Nightpaw: Mid December
Elders: Snarlingbear, Standingbear, Aloetooth, Agaveroot, Mousedream
Death: Mossfields
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