Posted by STRAY on Jul 31, 2023 21:44:04 GMT
THE DIVINE WIND
As you may have noticed, the wind is revered by all Clan cats. It carries the souls of warriors up to the stars, and it brings the ancestors' words to the earth. It tears apart the souls of the evil and banishes their remnants somewhere far. Most importantly, the wind is alive.
It is playful and has its own agenda that not even the stars know. The wind is responsible for blessings or miracles that cannot so easily be attributed to StarClan (like, for example, a healer being led to a litter of kits that oddly look like a same-sex couple in the Clan, soon after they expressed the desire to raise kits together. What a coincidence!). Every cat greets the wind when it picked up, even offhandedly ("oh, there's the wind!"), and every cat knows it is as old as the earth beneath their feet. Still, the wind has taken a liking to these little cats, and so it is intertwined with the stars as the Clans know it.
RidgeClan notably worships the wind even more than they do their own ancestors. Being high up on the mountain where the untamed wind is wildest, they claim to hear its voice the clearest, when it isn't muddled by the voices of StarClan. They believe that exceptional warriors can forgo a spot in StarClan and join the greater wind as a wisp, going where it goes and seeing places they would have never dreamed of seeing in life or in the stars above the territories.
Like I said before, it's a playful thing. Sometimes the wind feels mischievous and pranks the charges that it's most fond of (oftentimes, this means the healers of the Clans, though it has a particular fondness for youngsters). However, the wind can send its own signs completely separate from StarClan, usually telling of greater things that the ancestors could not predict or even understand. In fact, prophecies are often the result of StarClan first deciphering the wind's message on their own, then sending their translation down to the living. A storm of terrible wind will tell the cats they have done something wrong, while a windless day signals unstoppable change is on the way.
SIGNS & OMENS
As briefly mentioned in the Healers & Herbs guide, signs in Windsong are not limited to world-changing prophecies. There are many things a healer (or Clan cats in general) can glean from the whispers of the wind. How an apprentice will fare in their warrior assessment, when a queen will be giving birth, whether or not a hunting patrol will find success. It doesn't matter how minor or major the event is; the wind shares everything it finds interesting. Sometimes, StarClan's idle chatter and passive observations of the Clans will be carried to their earthly fellows, making it all the more important to be vigilant for any sign.
Of course, not every sign is as clear-cut as these. There will come major omens or a major series of omens that require a cat to think, to link the signs given to them and decipher their meaning themself. They will generally not understand what these omens mean other than "something good is coming" or "something bad is coming", and often the meaning only becomes clear the closer the event is. Healers may want to consult their Clanmates about this, but they must choose who they want to divulge their secrets to so as to avoid mass panic.
STARCLAN'S ROLE
So what does StarClan do?
StarClan is where Clan cats go when they die. It is an afterlife where any decent cat is guaranteed to go to rest. It's up to debate on whether StarClan can actually see the future (as the wind seems to do), but they do rely on their endless collective wisdom to make predictions and guide their descendants based on their own experiences and observations. Again, StarClan and the wind are independent entities working together to commune with the living, but both are capable of sending their own signs separate from the other. StarClan signs will generally pertain only to things that directly affect the Clans (as cats are rather prideful creatures), and they generally only speak to figures of authority.