🌑 Qualities, Weaknesses, and Interactions 🌑
The cats of Duskclan thrive in the moonlight. Though they’re no formidable fighters alone, they can easily overpower any enemy when working together.
These cats are nimble and light-stepped. They do their hunting when the sun sinks below the trees. With a special eye and comfort to the low-lit forest, these cats confidentially prefer to scout through the treetops at dusk.
In any fight or battle, these cats would take the advantage of stealth, agility, and - if the circumstances would allow it - a sharp eye in the dark.
Their weaknesses would be their lack of strength to take on bigger cats or animals as an individual. They’re strongest whenever they’re working as a team. Because they find themselves more efficient hunters and fighters at night, they’re not nearly as good in the light as they are in the dark.
🌑 Prey, Territory, and Threats 🌑
Duskclan lives in a coniferous forest on the lower levels of northern mountains. Their territory consists of thin and thick trunk trees, though thinner trees make up the majority of their forest. Leaf-fall and leaf-bare in Duskclan’s home are snowy and bitterly cold. Even so, the seasons of new-leaf and green-leaf push frosty, spiky winds.
The prey residing in Duskclan’s territory consists of the common prey animals. This includes mice, rabbits, squirrels, and birds.
Duskclan’s main prey are squirrels, weasels, and small birds, but often enough, a hunting patrol will drag back a hawk or two - and if the patrol’s big enough, they may catch the uncommon owl.
If the mountain weather wasn’t harsh enough for a soft cat to confront, Duskclan also faces the constant threat from other predators and scavengers.
Bears, wolves, raccoons, eagles, foxes, and owls constantly threaten the cats of Duskclan and push at their borders. Though these wild clan cats are fierce, some animals outmatch them by far. If a bigger animal - such as a bear - were to raid the clan’s territory or camp in the cooler months, Duskclan may have to resort to fleeing from their home until the threat passes.
Duskclan believes that the little white orbs speckling the sky at night are mini-moons, placed there by Dream-Walkers to light Duskclan's hunting grounds at night. If these mini-moons were to be addressed as a whole, they'd be named as Polarpelt.
🌑 Beliefs and Rankings 🌑
In the ancient times whenever Duskclan was found, a loner chased from their home had been led by the vague memory of a misty, star-speckled cat visiting them in their dreams. The starry cat led the loner to current Duskclan territory and urged the loner to find other cats pushed away from their homes and form what was current day Duskclan. Inspired by these mysterious cats that appeared to them in their sleeping minds, Duskclan dubbed them Dream-Walkers.
Dream-Walkers to Duskclan were spirits of cats from ancient times, guiding the clan as their overdue legacies. Duskclan looks to Dream-Walkers for all of their troubles and conflicts, upholding the hazy memories as wise and all-knowing beings.
The choosing of medicine cats: Duskclan's medicine cat is believed to be the reincarnation of a Dream-Walker. Therefore, they must have a special dream or vision from Dream-Walkers to become a medicine cat. If a Dream-Walker visits a cat's dreams to tell them that their destiny is to become a medicine cat, that same Dream-Walker or another will visit the leader of Duskclan prior to tell them of it. It is believed that these reincarnations had previous abilities of healing once in their past lives, and as a medicine cat ages, the memories of their past herb knowledge come back to them.
The choosing of deputies: Leaders of Duskclan don't choose their deputies. Instead, they go to the highest peak of their territory, on a frosty jagged stone, and ask for advice from the Dream-Walkers. A single Dream-Walker will come down to meet the leader, and as the representative of all the Dream-Walkers, will inform the leader of the clan's next deputy, to which it becomes the leader's responsibility to appoint the cat and announce to the clan what the Dream-Walkers have said.
The making of leaders: Once a deputy's destiny arrives to become a leader, they will travel to the highest point of Duskclan's territory, to a frosty, jagged stone, and touch their nose to the cool rock. Immediately they'll be sent into a sleeping state, where several Dream-Walkers will visit them. Nine Dream-Walkers will merge with the deputy, making the cat a vessel of the sorts. These Dream-Walkers are believed by Duskclan to be nine of history's fiercest and bravest cats, all uniting to become one. They all represent one life and skill, and bestow the knowledge of each nine ancestor's past lives to the deputy. As soon as the deputy wakes up from the dream, they will return to their clanmates as Duskclan's new leader.
