A Character Deep Dive [Stormwatcher]

With the recent plot of the stars coming more and more into play, I wanted to make a mega character dive into Stormwatcher.

Who is he? What does he stand for? More about his past, current ideologies and goals that he has.

This, I hope will let everyone have a clearer picture of him and is just kind of a fun thing to do.

**Please note, a lot of this is a vast oversimplification of events and while I have tried my best to remember the ordering of events and how other characters felt at different times, I cannot guarantee their accuracy. This is more to be used and read as a gaining knowledge about how Stormwatcher sees it and the post is sort of from his point of view with a lot of parentheses () parts where I joke around an insert my own kind of explanations and extra details. Its designed that the () are random thoughts that pop into my mind as I type and they can be ignored and it still make sense (or as much sense as a speedy rambling post can make).

If you see your character here and want to add to how they felt, please by all means that would be super cool to get other insights into it from direct sources as well.

I like, have watched way too many history recaps recently lol and so felt inspired to do like a history of Storm's life and like a 'voiced over' narrative of him and also a lot into the stars plot we have going on.

Origins:

Stormwatcher is my npc character slot meaning he was created as a warrior and was not allowed any blood family. He was allowed a ‘loose backstory’

Loose backstory :
The below is his backstory which is not played out but is still part of who he is and influences his later life a lot:
As a kitten, Storm ended up losing his entire blood family to various disease and predators, this was so that I could meet the requirement of him being a true npc blood for the skyclan family tree.

The loss of his whole family made him very unmotivated as the young cat went into apprenticeship. He was often called the laziest apprentice of the clan. No warrior wanted to train the apprentice who barely showed up and slept the other half of his lessons. As a result, he was passed from mentor to mentor never really getting a full education for clan traditions (keep that in mind as it’s influential later).

Eventually, one day it was decided he looked too big to be in the apprentice den so he was given his warrior name, but wait?? With all those mentor swaps did anyone manage to keep track of his 'paperwork' and verify that he did his moonstone? (Spoiler, nope he did not, which is also influential later on)


Early warrior life:

Now as a warrior the only thing that really had changed was his name. He was still, for now, the lazy cat underneath and better yet, he no longer had nagging mentors to make him do stuff, more nap time!
This was working out well under Bloodstar's leadership but wait what’s this?? Blood is dead in a tree?
Fast forward to under new management: now with Wolf and Birdstar. The two sisters semi adopted storm as their younger brother and were on his case about him to actually help the clan and encouraged him to actually try and make new friends.

This is around the time when Storm, Falcon, and Sun became close friends forming the trio skyclanners club (I made that name up)
Combine this with his now mentoring of apprentices and Wolf was getting the results she wanted. Mainly that he actually cared about his clan now even if the gruff big guy wouldn’t ever say that aloud.
The chapter of his early warrior life was transitioning. He was becoming less and less the lazy warrior and more and more an actual capable warrior whom generally wanted his clan to succeed.

War

News flash-
Thunderclan and riverclan have declared war on us. Storm fought in the battle of the river seeing some of the heaviest fighting of the war. With the resulting defeat of skyclan losing their leader and beech ,whom he had just started getting closer to, it was a devastating morale loss for Stormwatcher. He held a long and bitter grudge against riverclan believing them to be the main aggressor and ones at fault for this.

Unfortunately for Stormwatcher, he was about the only one who saw it this way as Falcon had no interested in continued battle against them, and Sun vanished from the clan for a bit.
(this certainly wouldn’t have any ill effect on the trio alliance would it??
Well slightly, the relation between falcon and storm was still decently strong but not as much as it used to be I’m sure this is not foreshadowing anything at all.)


Carrying out some solo anti riverclan skirmishes, he threw insults at poppy and kite and later on fought and defeated his old friend Sprucebark who told him perch had died.
The death of perchstar resolved the rest of his desire to hold riverclan responsible and from then on he also viewed the war to be over.

'Mid' Warrior life
Meanwhile, on the home front Stormwatcher was tasked with the training of a new apprentice. Surprise! Its Falcon's son Hickorypaw. Perhaps this could be something to make the trio alliance whole again and put any past differences he and falcon had aside?

Hickorypaw and Storm got off on a terribly bad start to their relationship and tensions between the two were at an all time high. This coupled with wolf's orders that Stormwatcher couldn’t leave camp alone due to his riverclan solo shenanigans led to an all time low morale for our 'hero'.

The ever deteriorating relation between apprentice and mentor led to Falcon and Stormwatche seeing less eye to eye on how the young Hickory ought to be trained, the potential to fix the trio allience had completely flipped and now the storm, falcon alliance was even worse off.
Luckily, they were still friends but it was a long ways from when it had started and had now taken two hits from the disagreements of how to handle riverclan from earlier and now the situation of hickorypaw whom Storm saw as the entitled deputies son who was getting easier treatment.

Eventually, hickorypaw became hickorysmoke and after a near brush with death of Stormwatcher and Hickory both fighting for survival against a dog, the two agreed that maybe they were not as bad as they once thought. Hickory and Storm now held an ‘uneasy-ish alliance- of sort of kind of being friends’

With him actually being able to be kinda friends with others and his ban from Wolfstar finally being lifted Stormwatcher was once again on the wanting skyclan to be strong as it could be path.

The stars plot
As it would happen, the next gathering was a huge blow to all clans when wild wolves ravaged and caused mass chaos.

Storm was furious, but he couldn’t exactly blame wolves or do anything directly about them. So what was the next best thing? Historically whenever something goes wrong you find a scapegoat and we haven’t seen him scapegoating anything in the past have we? (Cough, remember riverclan?)

The wolf attack was another incident in a long string of examples of gatherings that had gone disastrous. Stormwatcher was beginning to have had enough. Earlier, I mentioned he never really got a full education in clan traditions due to him never having a full permanent mentor? Well that comes raging back to center stage now. He was increasingly frustrated seeing his clanmates (who he does deeply care about even if he won’t say that aloud) were time and time again being put into situations that he believed were in vain.
A growing anti stars movement was beginning in his mind.

Now to be very clear: he likes individual stars. He misses bird, beech, his family greatly. However, his issue is with the traditions that the stars have the clans carrying out even after time and time again the traditions have proven to lead to innocents getting hurt.

His clanmates getting struck by lighting (even though they had not started anything), attacked by wolves and carried off by twolegs just to get started.

Not to mention, he is old enough to have seen the crazy gathering of wind and shadow go down. He was grateful to not have any part in that but increasingly worried that something like that could happen to skyclan. He knows how bad war can be having seen first paw the war of the river and didn’t really want skyclan getting drug into another war. He wanted for the stars to be a resting place for their honored fallen comrades and just wanted them to be able to rest in peace.

He concluded the stars leadership at the higher levels were making the clans go to these gatherings just for fun/old tradition that was no longer practical.

He doesn’t blame any individual stars, more so the outdated practices that are in place.

His ideas were spoken quietly at first only really muttered here and there for fear that he was the only one who saw it this way. However, much to his surprise he found that the more clanmates he spoke to the more he found that he wasn’t alone in his disgruntlement about how the clans were being treated.

This, coupled with the notably less mention of wolfstar's starclan language in ceremonies lead to the second part of the stars plot of the movement getting more publicity and him becoming bolder in his voicing of the believes.

Famously, and very publicly in snowpaw's warrior ceremony snow called out that he also swore to the stars and mentioned that wolfstar had not mentioned the stars during the meeting at all.
A clearer and clearer division was forming in the clan.
Soon after, Stormwatcher publicly called into question the safety of the gatherings and asked his clanmates to not go effectively asking to boycott the gatherings all together.
Stone, Misty, Light, Wasp and Sun?? (I am assuming sun feels this way too here based on what jj has said but this has not been formalized by sun in character) were all quick to agree with him. The movement was picking up steam at an alarming rate.

High rank Hollypaw was very against this movement and publicly stated this was a bad idea. Hollypaw believed Stormwatcher was out to get Hollypaw. Meanwhile Stormwatcher believed that Hollypaw was cool and he even considered Hollypaw to be a friend but he didn't like that his friend was being tricked by the stars traditions and deceived.

**This secton I am a little unclear on... from what I think it sounded like Falcon still likes the stars but Tara should be the one to confirm / deny this section.
Falcon also was becoming more and more clear to be currently on the side of the stars leading to a majority on the anti stars side but a high rank majority on the stars side.
With Falcon and storm now seemingly at odds once again the trio alliance of old appears to be at its most strained ever. With more and more cats choosing a side they believe to be right how will the future of the skyclan be resolved?

You should join and help write the next chapter of our history.

Join us? :)
I wrote this from Storm's perspective so like obviously this is like why he doesn't like the stars, but even if your cat likes the stars I really want you involved because I think this is how we can get a fun plotline rolling. Overall, I have tried to move a lot slower on this plot compared to what I normally do and that has been intentional on my part to try and get as much engagement as I can into it.

If you have read this far, thank you and if you want/are interested here are some links to the open topics of this plot that you can join:

If you are at all interested, I would advise posting soon (*like when you comfortably can) because the plot will stay here for a bit but it will be moving on to the next part here soon, so yeah.

https://warriorclancats.forumotion.com/t55961-snowpaw-s-warrior-ceremony
https://warriorclancats.forumotion.com/t56055-bye-bye-bye
https://warriorclancats.forumotion.com/t56026-twinkle-twinkle-little-open

formal initial plot:
https://warriorclancats.forumotion.com/t55832-stars-of-lies (this has changed a little bit and none of the falcon things really happened like the official plot went on about but yeah in case you wanted that) the below speculation will likely need another plot approval but I am hoping that is approved as well.

Speculation and Future Chaos Near you
The following is PURE SPECULATION and just sort of a little for funnies thingy. I do think that soon storm will be calling to motion for moonstones to become the apprentices choice and not be required. He never did a moonstone so he believes them to also be no longer something that is needed to be followed.

Pressure was mounting now on wolfstar as her so far mostly neutral stance was being called more and more into question from both sides.
Snow calling for her about the lack of star mentions in the snowpaw's warrior naming and now storm's outward speaking of the anti star movement were colliding. The clan was ideologically headed in opposite directions while the leader had so far tried to keep a center common ground.

Now with the upcoming development of storm wanting to push to make moonstone trips optional and no longer required the split continues to grow and the pressure for the leader to decide the fate of the clan is here.