#she exiled herself after her kits and mate just kept dying and dying. she has only one surviving descendant left: brightfur

[yellowcorps]

my favorite clangen leader so far, lotusstar. beetleclan's most miserable cat in history

[twilights-800-cats]

yeehaw so a long while ago, before mapleshade’s vengeance came out, we were all terrified of what the novella was going to do to the only (at the time) female villain the series had - lets be real, the erin’s track record is very, very bad.

so i wanted to do my own mapleshade story! and i did - for a while, anyway. i got busy, personal life stuff happened, and i dropped the project. the blog still exists with a portion of the story, though, if anyone is interested. i did my best at the time to piece together a pre-bluestar’s prophecy story before one existed!

now, mapleshade’s vengeance is a decent novella - one of the best, tbh. so i dont really intend to keep going with my imagining (or re-imagining i guess now) of the tale - so i guess ill just dump all the details i remember, because im bored.

the prologue of the story sees redwillow, a new member of the now-defeated dark forest, wandering about in his new home and considering what led him to this point. he runs into mapleshade, they sass, and mapleshade, tired and fading, settles down to tell redwillow her story.

it begins with maplekit and sweetkit as the kits of dapplestar, thunderclan’s current leader. a heavy leaf-bare has struck thunderclan, leaving prey scarce. maplekit is born with a sickness that makes it hard for her to breathe and move - she is confined mostly to the nursery, with sweetkit and the queens.

dapplestar is not the best mother - she focuses her energies on her clan rather than her children, so maplekit and sweetkit are often left by the wayside, much to the dismay of the queens and some of the clan. dapplestar, however, seems very blind to it all.

thunderclan and riverclan are in conflict - riverclan is responsible for the death of dapplestar’s deputy and mate, snowtail, but thunderclan holds sunningrocks because of him.

maplekit’s sickness makes every cat question whether or not she can be a warrior - she’s smaller than sweetkit, having not had as much of a chance to develop her muscles. however, when newleaf comes, maplekit’s illness doesn’t seem to return, and dapplestar makes her kits apprentices.

the story kind of falls off here - maplepaw and sweetpaw meet other apprentices at a gathering, like applepaw of riverclan. maplepaw strives to do her best to get other cats’ attention, because she hates that her sickness made her weaker than others. she is visited by a “starclan” cat who trains her hard to help catch her up.

i wanted an odd alliance between thunderclan and shadowclan, something that the books never really had happen - because riverclan is demanding sunningrocks back and windclan is backing them.

despite their clan’s alliances, maplepaw and sweetpaw meet up with applepaw and other apprentices after a gathering and train together. sweetpaw doesn’t like the thought of sharing battle moves with other clans and refuses to go again, but maplepaw is pleased to show off her strength - especially when it gets applepaw’s attention.

maplepaw’s desire for attention and strength drives a wedge between her and sweetpaw very quickly - but maplepaw is bolstered but her progress and her mysterious mentor and quickly becomes a rising star in thunderclan. sweetpaw feels like she hardly knows her sister anymore, but doesn’t tell her clan that maplepaw meets with applepaw and the others.

eventually the fighting between thunderclan and riverclan comes to a head. maplepaw and sweetpaw earn their warrior names - mapleshade and sweetbriar. its the last thing the two sisters truly do together.

mapleshade continues to meet with applepaw, now appledusk, and their relationship turns romantic. sweetbriar takes a mate and moves into the nursery. mapleshade thinks her sister is weak for wanting to have kits so soon, and mapleshade’s mind quickly turns to ambition and power, wanting to take her mother’s place as leader one day and knowing she can, because she is considered thunderclan’s strongest warrior.

sweetbriar catches appledusk close with another riverclan she-cat at a gathering and tries to tell mapleshade, but mapleshade refuses to listen. sweetbriar calls her a hypocritical fool and the two properly cut ties, though sweetbriar wishes things were different. sweetbriar has her kits - pinekit and other kits that don’t make it through leaf-bare.

dapplestar sees the death of her grandkits and declares all out war on riverclan again, driving thunderclan warriors to their deaths and losing several lives herself trying to keep sunningrocks on thunderclan’s side. the clan is not happy with this, but mapleshade is - more of a chance to prove herself as thunderclan’s best.

mapleshade, however, is taken out of the fighting when she realizes she’s having kits. she meets with appledusk, who seems excited - mapleshade, for once, thinks of the kits’ lives and wonders if they could go away and start a clan of their own. appledusk refuses, and mapleshade wonders back to sweetbriar’s warning that appledusk might be cheating on her.

it is confirmed at a gathering when riverclan’s leader announces appledusk’s kits

mapleshade, furious, attacks and kills appledusk on riverclan territory. no riverclan cat knows who did it, but they know a thunderclan cat to be responsible. thunderclan is confused at the accusations. mapleshade does not care for the lives of her kits but she is forced to stay in the nursery, where she gives birth to her three kittens.

sweetbriar one more time tries to mend their sisterhood, and only gets out of mapleshade that she wishes she’d listened to sweetbriar moons ago, looking down at her kits with sorrow and scorn. sweetbriar puts the pieces together and realizes that mapleshade killed appledusk, and tells her that such a secret could not be kept for long. mapleshade insists shell silence any cat who threatens her, even sweetbriar.

the kits grow, and eventually their parentage is revealed. mapleshade is reviled for her treason, and when riverclan’s medicine cat is told he realizes that mapleshade killed appledusk. by riverclan’s decree, thunderclan trades mapleshade and her kits for sunningrocks.

mapleshade is exiled from riverclan immediately, chased from the territory by cats who threaten to kill her. her kits are kept in riverclan, lost without their mother and hated. mapleshade, despite her prior feelings, had grown to love her children. they were all she had, even if she wished they didn’t look like appledusk. spurred on by her dark forest mentor, mapleshade seeks out members of riverclan and thunderclan and begins to murder them - she kills riverclan’s deputy and appledusk’s riverclan mate, and eventually makes her way to murdering dapplestar, who exiled her from thunderclan.

she tries to reach her kits but they fear her - and mapleshade is cast away, dying from horrible wounds. she dies alone, swearing vengeance on both thunderclan and riverclan, but sweetbriar finds her sister’s body and buries her beside their favorite training log, wishing her sister had been different but still loving her all the same - which leads mapleshade to seek out sweetbriar’s grandson, tigerkit, for training.

...

obviously this is rough, messy, and way, way longer than a novella would be. there were just elements i hadn’t yet figured out and mapleshade’s vengeance did a pretty good job with her story that for once i didn’t feel the need to try and revive this concept.

i dont even know if this is better than what mapleshade’s vengeance brought us, but there it is! if you made it this far, thanks for looking over this garbled plot dump!