Reincarnations of the Clan Leaders?

[runforever101]

Hey guys, I’m kind of new here so you may not know me well! I thought of an idea for a plot line that could be pretty cool. Maybe after the leaders of the fallen clans died, they were reincarnated to reform the clans? This doesn’t mean that they get to be re-chosen as the clan leaders though. What do you guys think?

[Danielle]

First of all, welcome to the site! I hope you've been enjoying it around here so far ^^

As for your idea, I'm not entirely sure that could work with our current (admittedly vague) stance on deceased cats/StarClan. Reincarnation falls somewhat into the category of "supernatural powers", and in a way it proves the existence of StarClan or another higher power. If at all possible I'd like to avoid that and keep StarClan a vague entity that is primarily based on faith, but if lots of people would prefer reincarnation to be possible in rare instances I'm fine with that too. If this were the case, we'd have to work out what causes reincarnation to happen, under what circumstances it's allowed, etc.

A similar idea we could go with instead of having the leaders themselves reincarnated is perhaps having those four leaders of the fallen Clans choose a cat or cats to appear to in dreams and help guide them in forming new Clans. After all, someone has to teach them the Warrior Code and about general Clan life, since none of the living cats are likely to know those things in their entirety. That could be fairly interesting, actually! (Also a small note just for clarification, these leaders would be original characters not from the books, since this is a universe where the books never took place.)

This got a bit long, sorry about that ^^;; I'll be keeping an eye on this to see what others have to say! c:

[asilentbeast]

Reincarnation is an interesting concept, but if used at all I really think it should be done sparingly. I like the idea of the former leaders and medicine cats visiting chosen cats in dreams though and was actually going to ask you about that eventually Danielle. Since StarClan is going to be more distant in this particular roleplay how will that effect StarClan's relationships with leaders and med cats? Are they the only ones who know with absolute certainty StarClan is real or will even they possibly have doubts?

[runforever101]

It's true that reincarnation should be done sparingly! I really like the idea of the past leaders and med cats contacting the new ones, kind of like the avatar! I'm glad you guys like the idea though! I suppose we should go ahead and plan out the StarClan cats. 

[Danielle]

Yes, I definitely agree on the fact that reincarnation would be very rare if it's added in. It becomes uninteresting if it's done too many times. To answer your question, Silent, even leaders and medicine cats could possibly have doubts in StarClan depending on the cat, since there won't be any concrete evidence besides their own experiences. StarClan will be a lot more limited in how they can interact with the living here, mainly through dreams and omens in nature rather than starry cats actually appearing to a cat that's fully awake.

Before we get started making any StarClan cats, I think I'll leave this open to discussion a little bit longer and see if anyone else has some ideas they'd like to throw in, or changes they'd like to see. The Clans are still pretty far from forming, so there's no rush ^^

[darkdino14]

I agree that having full bodied star coated cats is a bit too much. These cats are reforming clans that have been gone for a while, Starclan would need someone to believe they exist to send them any kind of message which, like Danielle said would be in the form of a cryptic dream or omens in nature. Anything more than that wouldn't arise until after the clans have formed. That being said, any contact prior to the reformation would probably be to a select few that either know of the clan existence or have applied for a high rank.

On subject of reincarnation, I'm fairly open minded about it as long as it's only the four leaders. On why the reincarnation would happen, it would possibly be the punishment for the leaders, to right their wrongs of tearing the clans apart in the first place. Then again we could go with Danielle's suggestion of having them select the most respectable warrior before the downfall. It would also be more believably if they found out about their past through dreams rather than being born with their memory. (A rule?: if for some reason a leader should die before their clan has learnt the code, a warrior or medicine cat would replace them. There can't be more than four reincarnated cats at any time.) Also, while they are guiding the current cats in the ways of the old, some lessons are better learnt or reinforced by mistakes and failure. The leader should preach the code (though it's likely that some might not heed it) but having the clans learn some things for themselves would be great.

Feel free to disagree and bring new ideas to the table

[Sylvii]

Personally I'm not the hugest fan of reincarnation. At least, the kind that makes no sense and has little rules and undefined boundaries and ends up contradicting itself. With that being said, if a bunch of people want to go for it then I'd be okay with that, as long as if we set down a couple of things like why a cat could be reincarnated, how the process works, that sorta stuff. I dunno, it's one of those things that's a bit iffy for me, but I could see it being done. c:

Now, the dreams and omens is more up my alley, to be honest. There's a bunch of cool concepts that could be explored with that, depending on the level of the cat's belief in StarClan and their personal opinions on how everything works. It just brings to the board a whole new thing to explore, character wise and plot wise, and I don't know where I'm going with this, but. It's a fun thing to play with, I think, and it still leaves room for StarClan being this very vague entity.

Yeah, anyways, go ahead and disagree with me if you'd like. I'm open to new things, that's for sure. And like I said, I'm not completely opposed to reincarnation, and I do think if it happens it would need some rules and a lot of discussion to get a good system going that makes sense.