The Ultimate Guide

Introduction to RiverClan: Crookedstar Speaks

RIVERCLAN CATS HAVE ALWAYS been viewed with suspicion by the other Clans because of our skill at swimming, and our fondness for getting our paws wet. We descend mostly from cats who did not come from the mountains to settle in the forest; those wind-tossed, open-air-loving cats had no wish to live among the close, whispering reeds, or dive underwater to catch fresh-kill. Instead, our first ancestors were those who saw the potential of the river for providing food in every season—food that would be safe from the other Clans because of its watery shelter. Our diet of fish made our pelts grow glossy and thick, better suited to keeping out the chill of the waves, and while other Clans scorned our plain, reed-rattled dens, we made them charming with feathers and moss and other trinkets we could collect along the shore.

Our warriors can fight as bravely as any, but we are called lazy and cowardly by the other Clans because we rarely venture into battle. We have no need: If no cats are willing to soak their paws crossing the river to attack us, why should we pick battles with them? The exception was Sunningrocks. Those rocks were ours! When cats first settled in the forest, the river flowed on both sides, cutting them off from ThunderClan and leaving them a short swim from our camp. The river changed direction, giving ThunderClan dry-paw access to the rocks, and those greedy cats instantly claimed them as their own. More blood was shed trying to take them back than I care to remember.

Sunningrocks was won and lost, won and lost, every season until we finally left the forest.

Now every Clan lives beside water, although we are still the only cats that swim for our prey. At first we settled on the island, but when StarClan sent the tree-bridge, it was claimed as our new

Gathering place, so we have made our territory around a stream that flows into the lake. We have been threatened by curious Twoleg kits and a poisonous pool, but RiverClan quietly endures, taking pride in our independence and our strong-swimming cats.

CROOKEDSTAR

WHEN CROOKEDSTAR WAS BORN , he was called Stormkit, but a fall while playing broke his jaw and his mother, Rainflower, renamed him. It seemed to Crookedkit that his mother never recovered from the disappointment of having a disfigured son. She showered attention on his brother, Oakkit, instead, leaving Crookedkit restless and discontent. He left the Clan when he was still a kit and lived with farm cats instead, learning to hunt through fields of wheat, free from the warrior code. But deep down, he was still a Clan cat, and he returned home, was given the apprentice name Crookedpaw, and eventually earned the warrior name Crookedjaw.

In his dreams, he walked with Mapleshade, a cat with revenge in her heart, who let him assume she was from StarClan although she was confined to the Dark Forest. She agreed to make him the most powerful RiverClan warrior of all, if he vowed that nothing would ever be more important to him than his Clan. Crookedpaw could see no trickery in this and made the promise. Mapleshade trained him hard, honed his skills, but also expected Crookedpaw to stand by and watch as, one by one, the cats he loved most were taken away from him.

Crookedjaw proved his worth many times over with his skill at hunting on land and in the river.

He never seemed to be able to do enough to please his mother, but he soon won the affection of his denmate Willowbreeze. Mapleshade tested him by luring a Twoleg kit to Willowbreeze, allowing her to be captured and taken back to Twolegplace. Crookedjaw rescued her with the help of her sister, Graypool—and he knew exactly what Mapleshade had done. He was beginning to realize that he had made a terrible promise that would leave him isolated in the midst of the Clan, but Mapleshade would not release him.

A stray dog in the RiverClan camp sent Crookedjaw racing to help, but he was faced with the dreadful choice of saving his Clanmates or rescuing his mother, who had been knocked into the river.

Urged on by Mapleshade, Crookedjaw went to help the other warriors, and Rainflower died.

Crookedjaw never forgot the moment when he lost his mother, and with her, the chance of ever winning her love.

When Shellheart retired from Clan deputy, the broken jaws of a pike on the fresh-kill pile predicted that Crookedjaw should take his place, despite being so young. Mapleshade took the credit for damaging the fish, and that night Crookedjaw finally realized that he was being trained among

Dark Forest warriors and dissatisfied, angry cats from other Clans, including Thistleclaw of ThunderClan. Horrified that he was being asked to kill to secure victory—against the warrior code—Crookedjaw vowed never to return.

But Mapleshade reminded him of the promise he had made, and slowly Crookedjaw’s world fell apart. His brother, Oakheart, fell in love with Bluefur, a ThunderClan warrior, and compromised his loyalty to RiverClan. An expedition to hunt rats in a nearby barn, suggested by Crookedjaw, led to the death of Hailstar, plunging Crookedstar too soon into leadership. And then greencough took

Willowbreeze and two of their new-kitted daughters, leaving just one, Silverkit, for Crookedstar to raise alone.

For a while Crookedstar thought Mapleshade’s curse had lifted, but his daughter Silverstream fell in love with Graystripe, a ThunderClan warrior, and died giving birth to his kits on the other side of the river, in the shadow of Sunningrocks. Thanks to Mapleshade, Crookedstar had achieved

everything he had ever wanted—and lost everything that mattered. It is to his credit that he hid so much of his private torment and was regarded as a strong, fair-minded leader throughout the forest.

MAPLESHADE

BORN IN THUNDERCLAN, MAPLESHADE was a keen and loyal apprentice, and a bold, skillful warrior.

Her single-minded pursuit of the warrior code, and the courage with which she faced every enemy—cat, fox, or badger—stirred up whispers among her Clanmates that she would soon be deputy, and then leader. Mapleshade reveled in their admiration and burned inside with ambition.

But then she made the tragic mistake of falling in love with a RiverClan warrior named Appledusk. She managed to keep their relationship a secret, creeping out at night to meet him beside the river, until the moment she gave birth. None of her Clanmates stepped forward as the father of her kits, and the medicine cat recognized the proud, handsome RiverClan warrior instantly in the shape of the tiny heads and the way they held their stubby tails.

Mapleshade was cast out by her Clanmates, banished for betraying ThunderClan and the warrior code. In desperation, Mapleshade tried to swim across the river with her kits, to seek refuge in their father’s Clan. But the river was swollen from leaf-fall rain, and her kits were swept away.

Mapleshade almost drowned trying to save them, but they were already gone, whisked out of her grasp like sodden little leaves. She made it to the other side, but to her horror, Appledusk blamed her when he learned what had happened. He wanted nothing more to do with her, and RiverClan refused to let her stay, not even for one night.

Cast out by the one cat she loved, and by the Clan she had hoped would give her shelter, Mapleshade became a rogue. Her hatred for RiverClan and ThunderClan festered and, unable to get revenge while she was alive, she plotted against them when she walked in the shadows of the Dark

Forest. When she saw young Crookedkit—rejected by his mother, cut off from his Clanmates, restless with unfocused ambition—she pounced. She promised to make all his hopes come true in return for one thing: that he would hold his Clan more precious than anything else in the world. Crookedkit agreed, not seeing that loyalty to an entire Clan was not the same as loving a single cat.

With the future RiverClan leader in her thrall, Mapleshade trained him to become the warrior she had been, while steadily stealing everything he loved most. She made him watch his mother drown, his brother fall in love with a ThunderClan cat, and his mate and daughters die of greencough. When his remaining daughter, Silverstream, fell in love with Graystripe and died giving birth to their kits on ThunderClan soil, Mapleshade rejoiced. Now another cat knew what it was to suffer the agonies of risking everything for love—and losing.

When the Clans moved to the lake, Mapleshade followed and plotted with the other Dark Forest cats to use discontented warriors in the living Clans in the greatest battle of all. Mapleshade could never make the Clans suffer enough for what had been done to her.

SILVERSTREAM

AS CROOKEDSTAR’S ONLY SURVIVING daughter, with her mother Willowbreeze lost soon after giving birth, Silverstream was a feisty, headstrong young cat who could bend her father to her will with little effort. But her impulsive nature was tempered by gentleness inherited from her mother, and she was loved by all her Clanmates. Silverstream was a RiverClan warrior through and through, with freshwater running in her veins, and she never intended to fall in love with a ThunderClan warrior.

She saved Graystripe from drowning not with any romantic notions, but because RiverClan cats were not in the habit of letting dead cats pollute their source of prey.

When Graystripe begged to see her again, Silverstream agreed out of curiosity. Her fondness for the ThunderClan warrior grew in spite of all her instincts to stay loyal to her Clan. When they met in secret, it felt as if she were walking on thorns, and fish stuck in her throat when she returned to her Clanmates at the fresh-kill pile. But she could not deny the pull of her heart, and when she discovered she was expecting Graystripe’s kits, her fears were balanced by joy that she would raise a new generation for him.

Tragically she bled to death giving birth at the foot of Sunningrocks, desperately trying to reach her mate. It is hard to know if Silverstream would have been happy to live in ThunderClan, closed in beneath trees and out of sight and sound of her beloved river. But if love could give her the courage to break the warrior code, it might have given her a chance of happiness with Graystripe.

LEOPARDSTAR

LEOPARDFUR, WHO WOULD ONE day become Leopardstar, was a young, keen, ambitious cat who was appointed deputy by Crookedstar because he saw in her a straightforward, loyal cat with none of the shadows that haunted his dreams. But Leopardfur’s black-and-white approach to the warrior code meant that she viewed her leader’s more tolerant attitude toward half-Clan cats—specifically Feathertail and Stormfur, kits of Silverstream and Graystripe—as a grave weakness. When Tigerstar took over ShadowClan and offered a way of making the forest pure Clan, with no petty fighting over boundaries because all cats would belong to one supreme Clan, and no loyalty blurred through half-Clan breeding, Leopardstar formed an alliance that nearly led to the destruction of every cat. Perhaps she also hoped that Tigerstar would invite her to be his mate and share the rule of the forest.

She realized her mistake when Tigerstar combined their Clans into TigerClan and made himself leader, then made half-Clan cats fight to the death. Whatever Leopardstar had hoped for, this was not it. But she was trapped by her pride and couldn’t speak out against Tigerstar—not because she was scared for her own safety, but because she couldn’t face losing the respect of her Clanmates by admitting she was wrong.

Leopardstar saved her Clanmates by agreeing to join LionClan on the eve of the battle with BloodClan; thanks to Firestar’s courage, she ended up on the winning side. But she never forgot how close she came to destroying her Clan. She led her cats on the Great Journey to the lake and supported them through the difficult days of shaping their new home. Her experience with Tigerstar had left her brittle and defensive when dealing with other Clans, but her loyalty to her own Clanmates could not be questioned. She died of sickness in her old age, knowing that RiverClan was safe and well settled beside the lake. It was a peaceful end to a life that had been more turbulent and sad than any other cat truly appreciated.

OAKHEART

GROOKEDSTAR’S BROTHER, OAKKIT, WHO would one day be Oakheart, was painfully aware that their mother, Rainflower, favored him over his littermate. Rainflower seemed unable to cope with the fact that one of her kits was disfigured from an accident, but it made no difference to Oakkit. He was fiercely loyal and protective toward his brother, so it was a great shock when, on the day they reached six moons, Crookedkit left RiverClan, and Oakpaw was forced to enter the apprentices’ den alone. He trained hard, proved his skills in fighting and fishing, and there were soon murmurs of leadership qualities. Crookedkit returned shortly before Oakpaw became a warrior, and it seemed that everything was as it should be.

But then Oakheart met a feisty, troubled ThunderClan warrior named Bluefur. Her sharp tongue and cool wit fascinated him, and he began to seek her out at Gatherings. Crookedjaw warned him not to get too close to a cat from a rival Clan, but Oakheart saw no harm in what he was doing. He was still as loyal to RiverClan as a warrior could be. After an encounter beside the river, Oakheart suggested to Bluefur that they meet in secret that night at Fourtrees. There in the moonlight she taught him to climb one of the four Great Oaks, all the way to the very top. Beneath the starry sky, Oakheart knew he had fallen in love forever.

They both understood that they could not be together, that one night was all they would have. They parted heartbroken but resolute. Not long after, Crookedstar became leader and asked Oakheart to be his deputy, but Oakheart refused. He was still torn between loyalty to his Clanmates and his love for Bluefur. To his delight, Bluefur came to him and revealed that she was expecting his kits. Oakheart began planning a future in which she would come to RiverClan or he would join ThunderClan.

However, Bluefur said she was going to raise these kits alone, telling them nothing about their father except that he was a ThunderClan warrior. Oakheart knew he would never be able to change her mind, but he vowed always to be the kits’ father if they needed him.

That time came soon after the three kits were born. Bluefur brought them to the river in deep snow, insisting that she had to give them up to save her Clan from Thistleclaw becoming deputy. One of the kits, Mosskit, died from the cold, but Mistykit and Stonekit survived. Oakheart gave them to Graypool to care for, and watched over them as they grew to be strong, proud RiverClan warriors, knowing nothing of their true mother.

Perhaps mercifully, Oakheart died before he saw Tigerstar’s dreadful persecution of half-Clan cats. Oakheart himself was killed by a rock slide during yet another clash over Sunningrocks, a true warrior’s end for a cat with more courage and dignity than his Clanmates ever realized.

MISTYSTAR AND STONEFUR

MISTYKIT AND STONEKIT WERE born in ThunderClan to the warrior Bluefur, after her illicit relationship with the RiverClan cat Oakheart. Faced with the agonizing knowledge that Thistleclaw was about to become deputy and destroy ThunderClan with his bloodthirsty ambition, Bluefur took her three kits through the snow to the edge of the river and gave them to Oakheart, leaving her free to be chosen as deputy instead. One of the kits, Mosskit, died in the cold, but the other two survived and were raised by Graypool after the death of her own litter. Of course, Graypool guessed exactly where the kits had come from, as did Crookedstar, but they kept Oakheart’s secret and raised the cats to be loyal, brave, respected RiverClan warriors.

Leopardstar made Mistyfoot her deputy, and Mistyfoot and Stonefur mentored Stormfur and Feathertail. But then Bluestar revealed to them the truth about their birth, and Mistyfoot and Stonefur became the thing that Leopardstar hated most: half-Clan cats. They were briefly reunited with their mother when she fell into the gorge, saving her Clanmates from a pack of wild dogs. Bluestar died at their paws, happy to have acknowledged her full-grown kits at last.

When Tigerstar took control of RiverClan, Mistyfoot fled across the river to ThunderClan, but Stonefur was captured and killed by Darkstripe and Blackfoot—both of whom had left their Clans to join TigerClan—on Tigerstar’s command. Mistyfoot returned to her Clan after the battle with BloodClan and resumed her duties as deputy, under a shocked and chastened Leopardstar. Mistyfoot helped her Clanmates on the Great Journey and stayed loyal to her father’s Clan as they settled into their new home.

She never forgot her ThunderClan connections, though, and would have been hard-pressed to declare war on Firestar and his warriors. But her half-Clan roots were long forgiven by all the Clans, and she was regarded with great respect from all around the lake. When Leopardstar died, Mistystar became the leader of RiverClan.

FEATHERTAIL

FEATHERTAIL NEVER KNEW HER mother, Silverstream, who died giving birth to her at the foot of Sunningrocks. She and her brother, Stormfur, were first raised in ThunderClan by their father, Graystripe, but when they were treated less than kindly by their adopted Clanmates, Graystripe took them back across the river to be raised in their mother’s Clan. Graystripe soon returned to ThunderClan, but Featherkit and Stormkit stayed loyal to RiverClan. When Tigerstar rose to power and inflicted his obsession with pure Clan blood on the whole forest, Featherpaw and Stormpaw, now apprentices, were obvious targets. Leopardstar was persuaded to keep them prisoner in an old fox den, together with Featherpaw’s mentor, Stonefur, and from that dank hole, Featherpaw and her brother watched Stonefur die in a savagely unfair fight with Darkstripe and Blackfoot.

Firestar, Graystripe, and Ravenpaw rescued them and took them to ThunderClan, where they joined their Clanmate Mistyfoot; like her, they chose to go back to RiverClan when the battle with BloodClan was over. In the following greenleaf, StarClan visited Feathertail, now a warrior, in a dream, urging her to listen to Midnight. Four cats, one from each Clan, received the same message, and joined together to travel to the sun-drown-place and find a way to save their Clanmates from the destruction of the forest. Stormfur went with Feathertail, too loyal to his littermate to let her travel so far alone. But Feathertail was not alone; she fell in love with another cat who had been visited by StarClan, Crowpaw of WindClan. To other cats, he was prickly and reserved, but Feathertail saw through that to the loyal warrior beneath and, free from the borders that divided their forest home, they had no need to hide their affection.

On the return journey from the sun-drown-place, they stayed in the mountains with the Tribe of Rushing Water, and here Feathertail learned that she was part of another prophecy altogether, not from StarClan but from the Tribe of Endless Hunting. They foresaw that a silver cat would be the one to save the Tribe from the mountain lion named Sharptooth that preyed on them. The prophecy came true, but it cost Feathertail her life, plunging from the roof of the cave with the shard of stone that killed Sharptooth. She was buried above the waterfall, and she walks in the stars with the Tribe of Endless Hunting, watching over her adopted home. But she has never forgotten the Clans and often visits them in their dreams, guiding their paw steps with the same gentleness and foresight that she showed in her short, courageous life.

HAWKFROST

HAWKFROST WAS TIGERSTAR’S OTHER son, half brother to Brambleclaw and Tawnypelt. He and his sister, Mothwing, as well as their brother, Tadpole, were born to a loner named Sasha who strayed into ThunderClan shortly after Tigerstar became leader. Sasha gave birth to her kits alone in the forest and tried to raise them in abandoned Twoleg dens. After nearly losing her litter in a flood that claimed the life of Tadpole, Sasha brought her kits to RiverClan. Although the life of a Clan cat didn’t suit her, she hoped it would give her kits a better chance of survival than if they were left in the wild.

She came back for them when she learned that the Clans were being forced out of the forest by Twolegs, but by then Hawkfrost and his sister, Mothwing, were grown up and loyal to the code they shared with their Clanmates.

Even before he learned who his father was, Hawkfrost wanted to take Leopardstar’s place. He trained harder than any other apprentice, practiced catching fish over and over even though the skill didn’t run in his blood as it did in his Clanmates’, and was rewarded by being made temporary deputy when Mistyfoot was captured by Twolegs. He was clever enough to know that being Leopardstar’s favorite did not mean he was respected by his Clanmates. For that he needed something more… such as a sister who was the Clan’s medicine cat. So he tore the wing off a moth and faked a sign from StarClan to convince Mudfur that Mothpaw was the right choice for his apprentice.

Tigerstar saw the potential in his ambitious, coldhearted son, and when the cats made the long journey to the lake, Tigerstar began visiting Hawkfrost in his dreams, encouraging him to support

Mudclaw in the rebellion against Onestar. When Mudclaw was defeated, Hawkfrost insisted he’d had nothing to do with the uprising.

And it was Tigerstar’s idea that Hawkfrost should plot with a ThunderClan cat who was already an enemy of Brambleclaw’s to lure Firestar into a trap. That cat was Ashfur, who couldn’t have realized just what Hawkfrost was planning. But Tigerstar underestimated Brambleclaw’s loyalty to his Clan leader; instead of killing Firestar as Hawkfrost and Firestar expected, he freed the ThunderClan leader from the trap. Then Brambleclaw turned on his half brother, and StarClan’s terrible prophecy was fulfilled: “Before all is peaceful, blood will spill blood and the lake will run red.”

Hawkfrost joined his father in the Dark Forest and preyed on discontented cats in the living Clans, urging them to train in their dreams and rise up against the weaknesses of the warrior code.

Hawkfrost personally sought out Ivypaw, Dovepaw’s troubled sister, and watched with pride as she became one of the Dark Forest’s most skilled warriors. Even when his companions doubted her loyalty, Hawkfrost insisted she could be trusted. When he realized that she had duped him all along and had been a ThunderClan spy in their midst, he turned on her. Before he could strike the fatal blow, Hollyleaf leaped to intercept it. Hawkfrost killed her instead and was pursued back to the shadows by a fearsome patrol of living warriors.

MOTHWING AND WlLLLOWSHINE

MOTHWING WAS ALWAYS FASCINATED by the healing skills of Mudfur, and she had no objection to being trained as his apprentice—but she did object to Hawkfrost’s methods of convincing the old cat to mentor her, and she lived in constant fear that his deception would be discovered. Mothwing was a quick learner, sensitive to cats in pain or injured, and well trusted by her Clanmates to care for them.

But she suffered from one flaw, unique to any medicine cat in the history of the Clans: Mothwing had no belief in StarClan. The ancestors never walked in her dreams; she felt nothing when she touched the Moonstone or the water of the Moonpool; instinct and experience took the place of sharing tongues with cats that had walked in her paw steps before.

Hawkfrost’s threat to reveal her secret meant he was able to force her to make false prophecies, such as the tale about troublesome stones in the river that led to Stormfur and Brook being driven out of the Clan when they tried to settle beside the lake after leaving their mountain home. Because

Mothwing was unable to receive warnings from StarClan, she didn’t know about the Twoleg poison on RiverClan territory that started killing her Clanmates, and her warrior ancestors couldn’t tell her where to find catmint when greencough struck. Terrified that her lie might be destroying her Clan, Mothwing confided in Leafpool, who began speaking to Willowshine in dreams on her behalf.

Mistystar’s nine lives ceremony posed a greater challenge, because Mothwing was forced to confess to her closest friend that she did not believe in StarClan. At first Mistystar felt the essence of her leadership was threatened by such a lack of faith, but a vision of a perfect moth emerging triumphant and glorious from a dry brown pod, together with whispers from StarClan, convinced her that she should trust Mothwing to fulfill her duties as she had done for seasons before, rather than judge her for the few things she could not do.

StarClan found a better solution in Willowshine, the RiverClan cat who showed an interest in becoming a medicine cat while she was still a kit. Willowshine’s keenness to learn about herbs and her efforts to help during an outbreak of sickness in RiverClan made her an inevitable choice for Mothwing’s apprentice. But from the start, Willowshine knew there was something different about her mentor. Mothwing taught her everything she knew about how to heal their Clanmates, but was evasive when it came to interpreting dreams and omens. She took Willowshine to the Moonpool every half-moon with the other medicine cats, but never spoke of the things that StarClan had shared with her.

Then, after the death of an elder from greencough, Willowshine was visited in her dream by Leafpool, the ThunderClan medicine cat, and Feathertail, a long-ago RiverClan warrior. They led her to a patch of catmint just beyond RiverClan territory, knowing it would be a precious addition to her herb store.

From that night on, Leafpool walked with Willowshine in her dreams, teaching her about StarClan and how to read omens and watch for signs. Willowshine didn’t need to ask why she was being helped by cats from other Clans; she had already guessed that her mentor didn’t share her connection to StarClan. But in the same moment, she knew that it didn’t matter. Mothwing was a wise, experienced, and skilled medicine cat. She deserved Willowshine’s respect and loyalty—and

Willowshine vowed to keep Mothwing’s secret until her very last breath.