Warrior Cat Clans 2 (WCC2 aka Classic) is a roleplay site inspired by the Warrior series by Erin Hunter. Whether you are a fan of the books or new to the Warrior cats world, WCC2 offers a diverse environment with over a decade’s worth of lore for you - and your characters - to explore. Join us today and become a part of our ongoing story!
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11.06.2022 The site has been transformed into an archive. Thank you for all the memories here!
Here on Classic we understand that sometimes life can get difficult and we struggle. We may need to receive advice, vent, know that we are not alone in our difficult times, or even just have someone listen to what's going on in our lives. In light of these times, we have created the support threads below that are open to all of our members at any time.
He remembered standing atop a hill, blinking down the steep ledge to the bottom, through slanted trees, rocks, and undergrowth, paw lifted like he were about to turn and leave; the next moment, the next time he blinked, he was at the bottom, wedged halfway through a briar bush, entire body giving off a dull throb of pain, the individual injuries all melding together into one. He supposed it was a blessing, how distant the feeling of pain had been for him since he had Awoken, but in the breath it was a curse, making him feel disconnected from the very earth he had almost shared an eternal embrace with, disconnected to the mind and body he had returned too. But in cases where his entire upper body was submerged in brambles that would have made anyone else writhe with pain, Sinclair was thankful for his gift. With his eyes shut tight as to not poke them, he pulled himself out, stumbling up and backwards, sitting down to steady himself and blink open his eyes. Large tufts of fur were left behind. He checked himself over, wincing at the sight of his torn pelt and skin — not because it particularly hurt much, but because of the ugly state of it. Not that anybody would see, he had hardly run into anybody at all in the forest he'd hidden himself in, and when he did see anybody, he made a direct point to avoid them at all costs. It was paranoia, he'd tell himself, he just needed thinking time. Thinking time that involved being completely and utterly alone for months and months on end. Or perhaps it had been years. Or days. He wasn't sure.
Sinclair stood on surprisingly steady paws, skirting past the briar bush and slinking ahead. The dull ache continued, almost annoying in its persistence, because by now it should have worn off, dissipated, but it stuck around. It only mildly concerned him. He'd seen worse, he'd felt worse, and certainly if it was so bad he would not have been able to move. He could get over the slight stabbing feeling near his lungs. He wasn't sure how long he walked for, or where exactly he was headed, or why he hadn't gone back the way he came, even if it would require a steep climb uphill. Eventually the trees began to thin, parting to make way for a peaceful, secluded area, a pond in its centre. Grass turned to dirt, leading onto a creaking wooden bridge. He ducked under a wooden plank to peer at the water below, gently bobbing against the shore, blinking down at it curiously. A drop of blood dripped from the fur of his chin, landing with a drip below him. Sinclair let out a slight hm, somewhere between confusion and annoyance, backing away from the edge to continue his aimless wandering. He stopped in his tracks.
Her breath had come in a cloud when she first trekked out, but as the sun climbed so had the temperature. The sun had been rising sooner and remaining longer as of late — and thank the gods for that. Her calico coat was well-suited for the cold — it grew long and thick — but the bleakness of leafbare had frozen her spirit stiff, and the disappearance of her sister had amplified the dread of winter.
This would be her first Newleaf in the League. The season of her god, the Green Man; when he was in his greatest strength, during his time of rebirth. You could see his influence in the sprouts and saplings that rose green and new, you could feel his power deep in the roots of the earth, especially when she walked where the oak trees grew thickest and strongest. But she was alone in her observance. Her faith was a secret from the league — the uninitiatied would surely judge it to be occult and profane. And for good reason. Verne remembered the sermons of her childhood: how her people sought to bring about “The end of all flesh”, where all cats would be pollinated and killed as sacrifices to bring the Green Man back incarnate. She’d lost loved ones to the sacrificial slab. She was glad she’d left all that in Loch, her old home.
Sometimes she wished she could forget, and join them in their ignorance. As if forgetting the debt would forgive the pound of flesh that she owed. But like a stain, once the faith was in you, once you’d felt its power, it was impossible to unsee.
She was ruminating all this — death, faith, family — as she quenched her thirst with the gritty waters of the still pond, when she sensed movement in her peripheral vision. She raised her head rather languidly at first, but she froze in alarm when she took in the mangled sight of Sinclair. “Uhh… hello.” Her voice was bastardly — a mix of different accents on account of the various lands she’d traveled, but the base tongue was something Gaelic. She wiped away the water that dribbled down her chin. “Are you in need of… medical assistance?”
Uhh… hello. Despite the suddenness of the sound, Sinclair didn't startle, didn't turn his head, didn't appear to have heard her at all, though his lips pressed into a thin, tense line, and he stilled as if caught in the act of something. It might not have been too late to turn, to dart off into the nearest stretch of woods and be lost in the trees once more, to continue his period of isolated thought, but by the time the thought even occurred he had been silent and unmoving for an awkward amount of time. Still slightly dumbfounded at the intrusion, unaware he was standing in League territory, he swiveled on his feet to face the voice, plastering a small, pleasant smile on his face.
"Medical assistance?" He laughed dismissively, but not impolitely, "no, no, I am quite alright. Just a fall." Sinclair tilted his head at her, a slight furrow in his brows, a defensiveness in the way he stood, an uneasiness, wariness, despite his cordial words. "I, uh. . . didn't think there was anyone here." Briefly, he peered over her shoulder as if someone would be there, but there was nothing but emptiness. He returned his gaze to Verne, still holding that same slight confusion.
“There’s plenty of people here, silly. This is league territory.” The mention of it made her realize that perhaps she should be chasing this cat away. And perhaps she shouldn’t be addressing this perspective intruder in such an informal manner. But when she drew up from her crouched position, her shoulders remained relaxed, her face cool — not smiling, but there was an openness in her eyes. The foundations of her mind gave an internal shrug. She was never into the territorial thing; she’d spent most of her life as a nomad, so it was hard for her to lay claim to a piece of land, partitioned by imaginary lines on the ground. With no one watching she wouldn’t bring herself to bother. Anyway, she was curious about this cat.
“Some fall. You get tangled up in that bramble patch over there? It’s gotten me a few times. You see the orange, grey, brown? That’s me.” Though looking at the state of this tom’s coat, it looked like he’d suffered more than his fair share of falls. The fur was carved-up with tangles of old scars and new, from the looks of it. He must lead a gnarly life, she thought.
She wasn’t nosey enough to ask where he was coming from. She certainly wouldn’t want him to ask that of her. So, she took her query to the other pole of the thought: “where’re you headed? You do know what the league is, right? Primal Instinct?” Her head cocked to the side as she studied him. He had an ethereal energy about him, and she recognized slight confusion in his eyes when he returned her gaze. “If you don’t know where you are, you don’t know where you’re going. And if you don’t know where you’re going then you might end someplace else.”
His confusion didn't lift at the mention of this league. It wasn't something he was familiar with, but his intrigue about the concept was piqued all the same, and as Verne pulled up from her crouch, Sinclair found himself relaxing where he still stood, muscles loosing their tension. "I wasn't aware. You own this piece of land?" He looked around again, as if something would change to make the fact obvious. "Primal instinct? How strange. I assume it's a group of sorts? A colony? I lived in one myself a while back." There was a sense of nostalgia in his voice, but it was gone just as quickly.
He gave a quiet huff of amusement at her anecdote. "I'd imagine they've gotten quite a few. Just a few scratches for me, they'll heal up soon enough. Don't even feel them." For the most part, it was the truth, he didn't, but the white lie came in the slight, ever-present ache from the fall itself, but his tone was flippant enough that it almost seemed entirely believable.
"You've got a point — I never had a particular place in mind. I mostly hung around over. . . there?" He nodded at the way he had come, "I had a den somewhere. I think I've lost it." The corners of his mouth formed an ever slight smile, a twitch of a thing, almost genuine, before dropping again.
“You own this piece of land?” Verne’s ears perked at that and a sly smile blossomed, as she donned the jester’s cap that she always kept close at hand.
“Yes, everything you see is mine.” Her paw rose to gesture to the green trees, the tufted rocks, the old rickerty bridge. She swooped her paw down to dunk into the pond water, the droplets ungraspable as they streamed through her toes to patter onto the water’s surface. “Yes, even the water is mine. Thou shalt not drink without my blessing.” She laughed then, not mockingly, but in a rather disarming way, as her dramatics crumbled away. The way she laughed seemed to ask, ‘you really think little ‘ol me owns this place?’
Her eyes steadied on him when her laughter died down, and she remarked plainly, “It is a rather strange idea — for any cat to own anything. But yes, Primal Instinct is a group that I happened to have fallen in with, through a unlikely chain of events, and they hold the lands between here,” she gestured to the pond, “the city to the north, the Great Oak in the great oak forest to the west, and the mountains to the North West. A lot of land for a few dozen cats I confess, but they’ll rough up anyone that says otherwise, I suppose.” She shrugged like it couldn’t be helped. “Not me though, I won’t hurt you anymore than you are, promise. I consider myself a genial cat. Not how my momma raised me up, but how I am.”
At first, in his cluelessness, Sinclair didn't catch onto the sarcasm, blinking at Verne then towards the ground, like they were connected by some unseen but physical force. Then she laughed, and he found himself with a faint grin of amusement.
Despite himself, he found himself interested in the group. Primal Instinct. It had a feel to it, like it was supposed to be scary, but the cat before him was anything but. She was friendly, oddly welcoming despite the fact it was owned territory, but there was a certain wildness to her, a draw. "How strange." It was a simple observation, a neutral, thoughtful one. He snorted lightly at her words, "that's good to know, then." His own mother was nothing but a few slight memories, but nearly anything before he had Awoken was still accessible, hidden somewhere in the depths of his mind or lost altogether. He remembered, when he'd left, that she hadn't wanted him to go, and perhaps that spoke of a kind person.
After another few heartbeats of contemplation, he was about to open his mouth and say, 'right, I'll be on my way, then,' because, as far as he was aware, Primal Instinct wasn't keen on outsiders, they wouldn't just welcome him into their arms like that, would they? But instead, his words betrayed him. "I would love to see this place." He hadn't even registered them at the tip of his tongue.
“It ain’t far, I’d be happy to show you.” Verne was immediately up out of her relaxed slouch and to her paws.
She wouldn’t have been opposed to his coming or his going, but she was certainly more pleased with his coming. Plenty of interesting cats had rotated in and out of her life, and the world was always a bit dimmer after they’d left. The glimmer would only return to her amber eyes when she perchanced upon some new treasure to steal her curiosity away. But the world had been barren of late. Maybe the changing of the seasons would change that, maybe not — in any case recruiting interesting cats was a good way to keep her mind occupied between her daily worships, and safer than treasure-hunting. Except treasure can be offered to the Green Man, not cats. She stole a glance at him. I mean she technically could, and in fact, probably should. She often doubted that ‘The Man in the Tree’ appreciated the strange two-leg knicknacks she left around the Great Oak, in place of flesh and blood. In any case, judging by his scars, it wasn't easy putting this auld boy down, and it looked like plenty of people had tried. She turned away. She’d left ritual slaughter behind her in the Loch, it was no use musing on it.
“Right, let’s be out then.” She gestured for him to follow and then leapt up onto an adjoining rock, and then another, climbing out of the sort of gorge they were in by the pond. On deft paws she stood atop the old worn bridge in no time, looking down to watch him as he followed.
“Make sure to stick close, we don’t want these chaps thinking you’re here to make trouble,” she quipped with a smile. “You do look like trouble, if I’m being honest, but they won’t bother you with auld Verne by your side.”
Sinclair padded over to join her, standing off to the side so Verne could walk ahead and lead the way, and he made sure to still keep a small amount of distance between them, for safety's sake, though he knew she was probably truthful about the fact that she wasn't the violent type.
He supposed it would be nice to see it, even if he never stayed. Sinclair had the ware and tear of a traveler, the tired energy that was still, somehow, constantly moving, but he was actually quite stationary. He preferred the comforts of predictability over the joy of adventure, and in that vain he knew that, once he saw the League, he probably wasn't going to leave. Not immediately, at least, not until the comforts got boring. At her gesture, he followed, hopping onto the rock after her much less gracefully. He jumped to the other, claws holding him in place in case he was hit with a dizziness spell or a blow of unbalance. But, soon enough, his paws touched the sturdy surface of the bridge.
You do look like trouble, if I’m being honest, but they won’t bother you with auld Verne by your side. His whiskers twitched in amusement, "I don't know I'm trouble — quite the opposite, I assure you." There was the smallest hint of mischievousness in his tone, a brief smile that matched. Her dialect intrigued him, not because he couldn't recognize it — he was sure it wasn't anything he grew up with, but there was a slight familiar note in it, a rhyme to something he once knew.
I don't know I'm trouble — quite the opposite, I assure you. “I take your word for it,” she assured. “They might not, is all.” The league cats could be tricky, particularly on first meeting.
She remembered when she’d first joined, nearly a year ago. She had mostly stood in the back while her sister did the talking— well, all the lying really. They’d found the league to be a group more likely to kill first and ask questions later — Niahm’s mystic charm had at least afforded them the benefit of the doubt at the time, a chance to prove their worth without bloodshed. Pretending to be obtuse had done well enough to divert attention from Verne while her sister spun her web — no one was threatened by the soft-minded. Soon enough they’d assimilated into the group, so well in fact that no one suspected them when a string of mysterious murders began soon after their joining. And that had been a peaceful time (at least before the murders) under Regulus, a more laidback Nemesis. The forest was rife with tension these days.
She glanced back at him. “I hope you like two-legs and all that crowd. We’ve taken residence in one of their big auld mansions. They’ve all fled this place, the two-legs, but their things remain, scattered all about. I like to collect them, so if you see any knick-knacks while you’re foostering about, be sure to let me know.”
