[river]goldenstar;[clanleader]

[Emma (: [one]]

|wordcount: 3140 (:
ooc: I wasn't exactly sure what one was required to do to apply for Clan leader. If I have to do something more, do inform me, please!

[goldenmask, goldenpaw, goldenkit]

Goldenstar
62 moons
tom-cat
riverclan
leader

Appearance: Large and burly about sums up the RiverClan leader's appearance.

Goldenstar possesses a muscular, all-around large build, nearly matching in size an adult fox. Everything about this tom is impressive, from his hulking shoulders to his powerful haunches; large, rounded paws concealing lethal ebony claws at the end of shorter, stout legs; a massive, round head with small ears and a wide, stubby muzzle, ending with an out-of-place gently pink nose. Thick muscles contour with every one of his proud, graceful steps, which can cover surprisingly severe ground, even with his short limbs.

Adhering to his namesake, Goldenstar has a thick pelt of solid golden-tan color, which manages to always hold a certain shine to it through any conditions, perhaps helped by the generous amount of fish consumed by any RiverClan cat. This quality lends the leader an always semi-glorious appearance, which skillfully contradicts the barbaric quality his brute muscles deliver. Long and neat fringes of fur gather around his paws, tail tip, and all around his face, which make him almost match the descriptions of the old Clans of lore that the elders are fond of telling. Upon his muzzle and around his eyes, his pelt has grown tinges of white upon them, a result from the stress of his past life and leadership duties.

Goldenstar's eyes are a simple light copper color, tinged with a dark orange. They always retain a permanent calmness to the leader's gaze that can not be swayed.


Personality: Goldenstar is a just, serious, and determined leader. With everyone he has cared for in his life deceased, Goldenstar considers the only thing he loves that remains is RiverClan. The tom cherishes his Clan, and values it above all else; particuarilly above the other four Clans. He always does what he believes is best for the Clan, no matter the challenge that decision may present. Generally, he will put the Clan above the individual, delievering fair and deserving punishments to those who break the warrior code. This, coupled with his usually serious and socially detached manner, give him the appearance of a harsh, straightforward leader.

Strong and determined, Goldenstar certainly appears a fearsome leader, both in and outside of his Clan. But he has devoted himself utterly to RiverClan, and often becomes immersed emotionally within its affairs. This leads to frequent stress and uncertain periods of depression for the leader, while at the same time grants him his relentless willpower and measureless strength that make him a powerful leader. He can be very indecisive over complex matters, though he will usually take the most logical and beneficial approach to solutions, and once he makes a decision, he will not change it with any amount of ease.

|Notes: The personality may be a little disheveled/unorganized. I wrote it pretty fast, along with the end of his history. I really wanted to post him tonight, but it's well past midnight over here, and I have school tomorrow. I know I'm going to hate myself for this tomorrow, when I have to get up in less than six hours and take two tests! xp


History:

A howl of grief errupted in the calm of the RiverClan camp. Heads rose at the mournful sound, and all eyes turned to fall sympathetically upon the tangle of reeds that was the Nursery. Most others in this clearing knew what the commotion was about, and glanced at one another with saddened or compassionate expressions. Across the way, RiverClan's black and white medicine cat, Patchfoot, emerged from his grotto and hurried into the narrow den of kits and queens.

"She's gone, Patchfoot, she's gone!" a thin, pale tan she-cat moaned to the medicine cat at his arrival, her voice tortured with grief and fear. "I just woke up from and... and she..."

The mother trailed off miserably, and Patchfoot took the oppurtunity to step forward and nose the tiny kit with the end of his slightly crooked muzzle. He hesitated over the small pale she-kit's lifeless form, almost a mirror image of her mother, save for the large smudge of white upon her chest. When he drew back, it was with a grave expression, and he bowed his head in submissal to the little kit's passing. In the shadowed nest, the queen let out another moan, as if she had held onto some minute hope of the medicine cat's denial of her daughter's death.

"Oh, my Smudgekit," the she-cat crowed, laying her head beside the lifeless kit. "My poor, poor Smudgekit, I pray you find your dear brother in StarClan. I pray Lionkit finds you, and shows you the way." The she-cat's pearly blue eyes closed, weighed down with immeasurable grief and loss.

His head still bowed, Patchfoot began to murmur some sort of apology and back his way out of the den, but froze at a small sound of attention from the distressed queen. He glanced up at her with cautious yellow eyes, waiting unsurely for her to continue.

"Patchfoot," she muttered to the RiverClan tom, her voice hoarse and scarcely heard. "Be honest, Patchfoot. What is the chance that my last kit shall survive?" The medicine cat's eyes flashed in the darkly lit den. This was exactly the question he had wanted to avoid answering.

"Goldenkit is big. He is strong," Patchfoot began slowly, picking his wording uncertainly. "But you know that I do not lie. Only StarClan knows whether or not he shall pull through." The queen said nothing, and only gave her handsomely angled head a slow shake upon her paws. Patchfoot took that as an acceptance of his words, and hurriedly retreated from the nursery and its mournful inhabitants.


A breeze stirred through the tops of the surrounding trees, causing the shadow in which Rushingwater sat to dance chaotically around her. The blue gray she-cat was staring at her apprentice with worrisome eyes, and though Goldenstar could feel the pity that wayed down her gaze like fire upon his pelt, the young tom did his best to ignore it.

Again and again, the apprentice practiced his most recently learned move: leaping forward, he hit the ground in a lop-sided roll, before scrambling to his paws, twisting around, and leaping on what would have been his dismantled enemy. After the entire morning of practicing the same move, Goldenpaw felt as if he had it succesfully memorized, and yet Rushingwater did not call for him to stop his exercises. She just kept sitting off to the side, consumed in her frazzled thoughts. Irritated, the apprentice tom decided to command his own order to stop his practice, and sat down where he stood, staring at his mentor with an annoyed gaze.

"Rushingwater," Goldenpaw mewed loudly, rudely awaking the elder she-cat from her reverie. "I've done this move all day, and I know I have it down. Can't we move on to another one?"

"I-- I don't know, Goldenpaw," the blue gray warrior replied hesitantly, after a pause. "We've been training for a long time, and--"

"Stop it," Goldenpaw mewed abruptly, his usually friendly voice cold and harsh. Rushingwater was surprised into silence at the sound of his tone. "I know what you're thinking, what you're seeing me as. It's all mousedung, though, and I want you to stop it. Treat like an actual apprentice, will you?" Throughout his demand, the she-cat's soft gray eyes had suddenly narrowed unpleasantly, and Goldenpaw now realized that his usually timid mentor would not take kindly to his telling her what to do.

"You are not at liberty to order me around, Goldenpaw," Rushingwater replied slowly, each word coming out of her mouth like ice. "We are done training if I feel that we are done training."

"No," the apprentice returned, jumping agitatedly to his paws. "It's never because you feel we've done enough, it's because you feel I'm too weak to do anything more! I'm not as mousebrained as you think I am!"

"I never thought you were mousebrained or weak," Rushingwater replied, her tone strainfully measured.

"That's foxdung," Goldenpaw snarled in return, staring at his mentor with a greatly affronted gaze. "The whole Clan thinks I'm pathetic, because I came from a sickly litter, but I'm not! I am not weak. I survived: I had more strength as a kit than even my mother, because I alone survived!"

"Goldenpaw!" Rushingwater cried, jumping to her paws. The bristling blue fur upon her shoulders made it clear that her mask of calm had completely fallen. "You're getting out of control. Watch what you say!"

"No, I am not out of control," Goldenpaw insisted stubbornly. "I am being completely reasonable. I'm almost eleven moons old, for StarClan's sake, and I barely know how to save my own pelt in a fight, let alone chase somebody off. Are you telling me that I'm going to be able to become a warrior at the same age as every other apprentice, because I really don't see how I could learn a season of knowledge within the next moon!"

For a long moment, the two cats simply stood glaring at one another, gold and blue pelts bristling furiously. Then, when Rushingwater refused to answer his accusation, Goldenpaw simply turned around and stalked away. Rushingwater did not call him back.


Goldenmask's flanks heaved as his lungs fought for their necessary air, and every inch of his solid muscle burned with an inferno of pain, yet the young warrior couldn't have been in a better mood. However, it wasn't the sight of the last blasted rouge fleeing for its life out the ravaged RiverClan barrier that had Goldenmask's spirits so bolstered; it was the memory of the night before that played over in his brain. In fact, it was the memory of that night that had stayed in his mind throughout the entire battle, and that had lent him the constant strength and vigilance to bring down every enemy that he had faced. Even now, with a torn open flank and blood dripping down into his sight from a nasty cut above his eye, Goldenmask felt utterly invincible. No one could strike him down; not when Lichenfur loved him like she did.

Already, the memory of the beautiful, lightly striped tabby had him forgetting the ended battle and eager to find her among the battered warriors of RiverClan. But before he could, there was a nudge upon his flank, and Goldenmask felt his hind legs stumble out from beneath him. The tom paused, confused at the clumziness of his hind, when he was further disoriented by the sudden blur of his vision. The warrior swayed where he stood, before a steadying tail wrapped itself around his broad shoulder.

"For StarClan's sake, Goldenmask, sit down. You're exhausted," Fishpaw, the small brown medicine cat apprentice, suddenly walked into Goldenmask's sight as his voice sounded in his ears. The warrior dropped to the ground at a gentle push from above. Fishpaw, again, proabably.

"No, I'm not," Goldenmask objected, blinking in the sun that shone across his face. Fishpaw glanced disbelievingly at him.

"You probably just haven't felt it yet," the apprentice explained, fidgeting with something on the other side of him. Goldenmask couldn't see what it was, but it didn't matter. Not as much as finding Lichenfur again did. "Now, eat this. All of it." The older warrior blinked again in surprise as Fishpaw suddenly pushed a small pile of leaves before him. The golden tom stared blankly down at the cluster for a moment, before shrugging and lowering his head to obeidently scoop the leaves up upon his tounge.

"Now, may I go?" Goldenmask asked, already climbing to his paws. Fishpaw stopped him as he swept his long, thin tail in his way. This little cat is starting to get really annoying.

"No, you may not," Fishpaw told him, staring at him with large yellow eyes. "Sit back down. Lay down, actually; I need to look at your belly."

"My belly's fine," Goldenmask grumbled as he lowered himself to the ground again. He lay reluctantly down upon the earth as Fishpaw roughly prodded his unhurt shoulder with a fluffy paw, and no sooner had his great head touched the dirt that Goldenmask was asleep.


When Goldenmask next blinked open his copper-colored eyes, day had melted into night. He blinked mindlessly for one disoriented moment, briefly unable to remember where he was or why. Then the darkened RiverClan camp came into focus before his eyes, and the foggy memory of the recent battle rose in his mind. Goldenmask groaned aloud, then, as the rest of his body seemed to awaken alongside his memory. A deep, dull pain had settled into his stiffened muscles, and his head felt stuffed full of the riverside reeds: thick, heavy, and proddingly sharp. For a moment, Goldenmask closed his eyes and dropped his head back to the ground. Then an image of a light tabby she-cat with soft, loving green eyes appeared before his closed gaze, and the far sweeter memory suddenly filled the tom to the brim with strength nothing but love could deliver.

Again the tom's eyes flickered open, but now they were searching, longing. Ignoring the discomfort of his body, Goldenmask rolled himself to his paws. He could feel a thick patch of cobwebs swathed along his flank, awkwardly restricting his movement as he straightened into a sitting position. The warrior inhaled deeply, trying to clear his head, before looking around the clearing. Not a single cat roamed around the reed-enclosed camp; it could only be expected that the cats were recovering in the shelter of their own dens. Flexing his forelegs once to relax the muscles, Goldenmask rose to his paws and turned around to pad in the direction of the reedy warriors' den. Before he had taken a pawstep in that direction, though, he froze upon finding the absent members of his Clan. They were all clustered silently in a ragged, semi-circular huddle, their backs turned obliviously to the awakened tom. A shudder passed through Goldenmask as he took in the sight; some cat had died in the battle.

With an overwhelming sense of relief, Goldenmask spotted the lightly striped pelt of Lichenfur crouched in the center of the huddle, surrounded by her mournful Clanmates. His ears flattening in dread of who he might find lifeless on the mud floor of the RiverClan camp, Goldenmask began making his way toward the she-cat. He gently nudged himself a pathway through the silent crowd to her side, and brushed his shoulder fur along her light cream flank as he drew up next to her. "Why didn't you wake me up?" he murmured in her ear, staring at her face with a soft, saddened expression.

"Fishpaw said you needed your sleep," was the muttered reply, but something was off. Lichenfur turned her face, and their miserable gazes met. All the relief suddenly drained out of Goldenmask at once, as he realized the she-cat he spoke to was instead Lichenfur's sister, Reedtail, and not the she-cat he was love in with. Goldenmask felt his heart freeze in terror.

He didn't recognize the brown striped flank in front of him, nor did he care as he shoved his way to the front of the ragged group. There, stretched out in a smear of blood and damp earth, was the only love of his life, her wide, stunning green eyes chillingly empty now. A shudder of horror swept through Goldenmask, and he pitched forward in a single, stumbling step before falling to the ground. The tom inched forward sightlessly, through the mud and bloody torn fur, to reach Lichenfur's side. Feeling his world falling down around him, Goldenmask closed his eyes and pressed his nose into the cold, wet fur of his still Lichenfur, wishing more than anything to die right there in the mud and venture to retrieve his heart from StarClan, for Lichenfur had taken it with her as she left.


"Let all cats old enough to catch their own prey gather here beneath the leader's tree for a Clan meeting," Nightstar's grim voice rang out over the RiverClan camp, and slowly cats emerged from the surrounding dens to the muddy central clearing. The reed walls enclosing the camp were looking signifigantly better, and the majority of cats in the clearing were bearing healing wounds and fading limps. But the improvements were lost on Goldenmask, who was crouched over an uneaten fish upon the ground, staring off distractedly into space. If he had not been outside already, the tom may not have even answered the leader's call.

"Patchfoot has informed me that last night StarClan has claimed the life of our noble deputy, Lizardeye," Nightstar announced. "His honored memory shall not fade from this camp for many moons to come, and never from our hearts."
The leader paused now, allowing a brief moment of silence to settle over her Clanmates for which they could express their grief. Then, she resumed her meeting. "After much consideration, I have decided who shall follow in Lizardeye's pawsteps; Goldenmask shall be the new deputy of RiverClan."

This news, however, was enough to jostle Goldenmask from his grieving reverie. Stunned, the tom slowly raised his gaze from where he sat at the outskirts of the camp to meet the elder she-cat's gaze. For a long moment, yellow eyes were locked in a silent debate. Then Nightstar nodded once, in confirmation, and Goldenmask slowly rose upwards. His copper gaze fell down to the rest of RiverClan, who had all turned to survey him with curious and approving gazes. Goldenmask was caught off guard by the lack of reproachful expressions; he was generally young to be chosen for deputy. And yet, it seemed the whole of RiverClan supported Nightstar's choice.

The tom looked up again at the black-pelted leader. "Thankyou, Nightstar," he muttered breathlessly. "I accept."

RP Sample: Not needed. (Done for Feather's profile.)

[Hollystar]

You don't have to do much. Tryouts take too long so I chose which profile would be best to be a leader. And this one is great.

Approved! =]