Childhood and Naming
Brambleshanks was born to tribe of cats in the hills near the city of Tormelo, in the far Northern kingdom of Isoloi (what is now Northwestern Makali). This original group, known as the Skybound, were a heretical reinterpretation of cat traditionalism, and Brambleshanks was born in their final hours. As a newborn kitten, Brambleshanks was hidden by their parents as the Skybound were slaughtered by the traditionalist clans. The future prodigy would have starved then if it weren't for the good luck and mercy of one of the traditionalist warriors, a cat by the name of Stormpelt. Stormpelt, having just slain Brambleshank's biological parents, stumbled upon the young kitten and took it back to his clan to raise as his own.
Brambleshanks spent his early childhood under Stormpelt's tutelage. The rest of the clan (Sandclan), didn't particularly like this heretic-born cat, but Stormpelt did his best to raise his adopted son with kindness and love. He gave the prefix "Bramble" to the kitten, in honor of his unruly dark tabby pelt, and did his best to integrate the young Brambleshanks into the clan structure. The elders of the clan, however, did not recognize Brambleshanks as having proved themselves as an apprentice and denied them a full name. While Stormpelt worked to appeal this decision, tragedy struck Sandclan: fires from the terrible humanoid religious infighting nearby spread to the home forest of Sandclan, and displaced strays made the surrounding territory dangerous to migrate through. The clan was forced to disperse temporarily and while most of the clan headed inland, Brambleshanks headed towards the city.
In the city of Tormelo, Brambleshanks stumbled across a most curious cat: a conjurer of the bardic tradition by the name of Sturam-sturam. Sturam-Sturam offered Brambleshanks refuge at a group of Jellicle Cats known as the Under-Court of Hilobessny. The Under-Court protected Brambleshanks and taught him the way of the Jellicles, and completed his name: Brambleshanks the Tragedy Cat. Brambleshanks did not last long with this Jellicle life. Not only did having to learn to sing about himself as an object of tragedy not work with his personality, but many of the cats were not particularly welcoming (especially to a cat who doesn't fit a role). The final straw was when Stormpelt ventured out to the city to find and return Brambleshanks to Sandclan's new home, only to be attacked by the Jellicles and injured. Brambleshanks was furious, and picked a fight with Old Revival the Eldercat, leading to his exile.
Unable to find Stormpelt or return to the Jellicles, Brambleshanks turned to living as a lone stray in Tormelo. This was a rough life, with Brambleshanks competing at the docks with a number of seasoned cutthroats for food and shelter. Starving and alone, Brambleshanks darted onto the docked ship
The Muse's Chariot, only to discover why no other cats had done so: the ship was leaving port. For a week, Brambleshanks lived as a stowaway aboard the C
hariot. Ever the poor of fortune, Brambleshanks found that this ship was doomed - a storm struck the vessel and blew it into deep waters. A curious
Leviathan began probing the ship for interesting cargo, and the ship desperately struck first. The ancient leviathan wrecked the ship with ease and began sorting through the cargo and personnel, of which Brambleshanks interested it the most. A cat was unusual this far out, but a cat that was all Jellicle, traditionalist, heretic, and stray at once? Not only was that fascinating to the curious leviathan, but it offered an opportunity. This was a cat falling between the cracks in the world, pulled between two heavens and a hell. It would be the perfect warlock and a most interesting piece for the leviathan's collection. Brambleshanks fell through dreams and nightmares beyond the edges of the world for what felt like years, but when he awoke, he was back in Tormelo. And now he had power.
The Tormelo Experiment
Blessed with great power and a newfound confidence, Brambleshanks set to work fighting the dockstrays for dominance. His magic, which grew every battle, cowed the strays and he organized them into sharing their food and shelter fairly between them. He marched with his strays to the Jellicle Court of Hilobessny and proved his conjuring power to Sturam-Sturam. The renewed urban violence of Tormelo was disturbing the Court, and Brambleshanks was able to mobilize a faction of the Jellicles to oust Old Revival to place himself in power among the Jellicles. He promised the Jellicles that, if they followed him over tradition, he would make peace with the wild strays, the traditionalist clans, and the humanoids alike - and he set to work fulfilling that promise. He drew other warlocks, mostly dryad and human, to his side, as well as more strays. He began trying to recreate what he imagined the Skybound (the heretic faction he was originally born to) were like: a mixture of Jellicle and traditionalist in rebellion against the unfair elements of the
Cat Heavens. His new Skybound cult rose in popularity as his alliances brought stability to the cats of Tormelo. He finally reached out to his old clan, Sandclan, and offered them their old land back in exchange for respecting his new cult. His old mentor, Stormpelt, was able to convince the clan to accept, but begged Brambleshanks to abandon this religion and return to the old ways. Brambleshanks was too deep in, and too drunk on power and hope, to accept, but he promised all traditionalists freedom of religion in his coalition and he toned down some of his more radical anti-Heaven sentiments.
To maintain this stability, Brambleshanks needed close connections to the humanoids of Tormelo - and those connections slowly drew him into city politics. The city and kingdom had, until recently, been part of the
Atajano movement (the attempt to create a third religion in opposition to
The Final Choir of Vetevism and
The Singing Church of Orisha), but that movement had crumbled and the Orishan church had returned with a vengeance. Warlocks had prospered under the previous administration, but the church had no tolerance for their dangerous deviancy - and that is where Brambleshanks came in. The cats organized to act agents against the church, stealing documents and freeing prisoners. This worked wonderfully for some time, as the cats made many human allies and accumulated resources and influence. But when the church found out, their reaction was fierce and terrible. A great purge was launched against warlocks, heretics, and their cat allies. Traditionalist cats aligned with the church were imported from other cities and armed against the Skybound coalition. Despite Brambleshanks' growing power, the coalition was absolutely crushed. Sandclan was slaughtered, the Jellicle court dissolved. Brambleshanks was forced to flee inland, on the run from church-cats of Hiku.
The Travels of Brambleshanks
Brambleshanks was lost once again, as warlocks so often are. He turned to his patron, the Lurking Eyes, for guidance - and the Eyes sent him South, in search of the distant
Kingdom of Kokai. The Kingdom of Kokai was a kingdom with a history of warlocks as priests, aristocrats, and warriors, and was in the midst of its own terrible civil war - and many Leviathans were sending their warlocks there to try and carve out their piece of the pie. To the Eyes, it would be most interesting for their star pupil to learn what they could there, and it would give Brambleshanks his hope and purpose back.
Brambleshanks traveled through many warring kingdoms and strange lands, and lived among all kinds of cats and humanoids. His time among foreign traditionalists and jellicles opened his eyes to how diverse those two categories could be: while all jellicles and all warriors had their shared roles (Star, deputy, medicine cats, The Code, Elder Verse Cats, court conjurers, Jellicle names and Warrior names), these roles could mean wildly different things in each place and still be connected to the blessings of Cat Heaven. What mattered were the names, the masks and roles played, the veneer of tradition. Compared to the individual personalities of the Humanoid Gods and their strict values policing, the cat heavens were actually quite localized. That localization meant that they could be anything, especially if cats and their heavens were clearer with one another. But traditionalism and resistance to change on the ground and in heaven could enter a destructive and oppressive feedback loop - one that would require voices mortal and dead to break. By the time Brambleshanks arrived in Kokai, this was his vision - not rebellion, but outright transcendence. And this vision attracted a number of followers, many of whom found that they could open their minds to warlockery by following his teachings.
Fighting the Singing Church
When Brambleshanks arrived in Kokai with his acolytes, the war had been going for years. There were two main sides in this war by that time: the Orishan church and their alliance of Northern merchants and local prisms, and a broad opposition coalition that was divided between a faction of traditionalists and a faction centered around an invading fleet from the Final Choir of Vetevism. Brambleshanks joined with the traditionalists, who were very warlock-oriented and were accepting warlocks from across Nafena into their ranks. The cats set to work carving out their own corner of Kokai and making connections to other cat clans and courts across the kingdom.
In 1495 ME, the traditionalist warlocks held a grand moot to organize themselves into a coherent political body. Warlock cooperation is a tricky thing - warlocks are eccentric individuals, often with strong personalities, in service to patrons that rarely get along. The diverse array of warlocks and patrons at play in Kokai made this especially bad; forging them into any functioning organization was like herding cats. The moot made considerable progress all agiven, as all parties agreed that they would benefit from forming a bloc, but the major patrons and their champion warlocks quickly began fighting among one another for dominance. Brambleshanks and their acolytes, as the primary agents of the Lurking Eyes, watched and waited while the other major warlocks tired themselves in duels and intrigue. After weeks of this, only the five exhausted champions of the five most involved patrons remained in the running. That is when the cats leapt into action, sweeping the competition and bringing the moot to a climactic finish.
With the warlocks united and their fiefs pooled together, the war swing even further against the Orishan church. In 1497, the war was won - but the peace was brief. The opposition coalition began collapsing into a second civil war almost immediately, as the Vetevic choir and the traditionalists turned on each other. The choir tried approaching Brambleshanks to bribe the warlocks into joining their group, but the cat warlock refused. He knew that the choir wished to experiment with his shapeshifting talents, and to expand their dominion over catkind, and the tabby had no interest in letting that happen. The choir's aspirations of a perfect cat monoculture and a possible catboy species were crushed.
All throughout the Kokai civil war, Brambleshanks was setting down roots in Kokai for the long haul. During the first segment of the war, when the cats were carving out their fief, Brambleshanks was building constant connections with the local cat clans and courts. He also tracked down the three cat warlocks of Kokai (the Magnificent Beamcat Geka-Gemi; the Mad Healer Waveleaf; and the Lost Sister Frost) and brought them into his group to normalize all kinds of cat warlockery. One of these local warlocks, Sister Frost, was a cat who strode the line between "pet" and "traditionalist", and had a rough relationship with Cat Heaven. Frost and Brambleshanks spent many hours talking philosophy, and the two grew to be close friends. Prior to the Moot, Frost introduced Brambleshanks to the local
Squiddle tribes as well as to her patron (The Howling Melody). And Brambleshanks introduced Frost to Jellicle life and to the theology of mortals, and challenged Frost's preconceived notions of what these categories meant. At the Grand Cross-Feline Ball following the grand Moot and Brambleshank's victory, Frost and Brambleshanks confessed their feelings to one another. It took some time after that for their relationship to actually start, given the war (as well as questions from his acolytes as to whether Brambleshanks was limiting his warlockery with petty mortal relationships). The two eventually entered a secret relationship, agreeing to go public once the two's power over Kokai was unquestionable.
Fighting the Final Choir
The Choir recognized that despite assumptions that cats were weak and disunified by nature, Brambleshansk was the core of their opposition. The traditionalists had local aristocrats, but the Singing Church had done an excellent job of thinning the roster of the aristocracy. The choir also had their trump card: the loyalty of the crown prince and heir to the throne Marosh II, who had invited the fleet into Kokai to begin with. The Choir's early political moves would have led to the traditionalists toppling like a house of cards if it weren't for those troublesome warlocks and their pesky cats. And said warlocks and cats could be quite useful back in the choral heartlands if given the proper
conditioning. And so the Choir went after the cats, and drove Brambleshanks and Frost out of the heartlands of Kokai.
Even without Brambleshanks, the cats of Kokai stood strong, and the warlocks quickly elected a new leader. The work of the last few years held, and the traditionalists were able to punch back. And while the warlocks and the choir fought, Brambleshanks was able to rally the cats of South Nafena more broadly, as well as the neighboring tribes and polities. Cats across the region began to have to take sides for or against cat unity, and many cat scandals and wars erupted. When the two armies of cats were about to fight out their differences, Brambleshanks interrupted and offered a solution: he would meet with Cat Heaven and the Heavenside Layer before all of them, and the future of catdom itself would be hashed out in words, not claws. Brambleshanks slept in a sacred glade and projected his thoughts for both hosts to see - and stood before the great Clan of Ancestors as an equal. He negotiated and debated with them for hours, petitioning the ancient cat dead for an alternative to traditionalist, Jellicism, or Hell: a fourth path, that could incorporate the sacred roles of both without threatening either, and could offer an ethical afterlife for those cats who cannot be clearly defined. The Cat Heavens both agreed to this, and in exchange Brambleshanks was charged with making Kokai a sanctuary for all of catkind.
With the blessing of cat heaven, Brambleshanks returned with an army of cats and outcasts. As their forces bolstered the arlocks and traditionalists, Brambleshanks set to work sabatoging the Choir. He was able to sneak into Prince Marosh's chambers and enthrall him magically, swaying him over to the traditionalist's side as a perfectly loyal magical thrall. The establishment began to turn against Vetevism. The Choir was able to kill Marosh and the royal family, but it was too late- their foothold was lost. In a last, desperate bid, the Choir and Singing Church allied and flung their final forces at Brambleshanks, but they lost at the Battle of Shanafa Fields. Kokai as finally won!
Cats that Govern
Following the Battle of Shanafa Fields, the warlocks were left with the kingdom of Kokai to rebuild. The traditionalists had won, but the original traditionalism of the faction had died years ago. What emerged was anything but traditional: a centralized state, run by a warlock oligarchy with influence from across Nafena and Maradia, with a desire to find a religious answer to both the Vetevics and the Orishans. With no clear royal line, local aristocrats seized the throne for a few years before falling into infighting. The cats marched in and put an end to the squabbling, crowning Brambleshanks as the Starking of Kokai. Brambleshanks refused the crown, but offered it to his new mate - who became Froststar, the Monarchy Cat. Brambleshanks himself was anointed an Ascended Being and prophet and held a grand renaming where he became Verse-elder Cosmic Lord Brambleshanks the Hidden Star. He set to work making the religion as Frost ran the government, and they were finally able to have their family. A litter of six was born: Sparkival, Dandollion, Alderbert, Juniparilla, Berrynerry, and Tumblepelt, the Sacred Six of the Enchanted Bloodline.
Brambleshanks never settled down permanently - he would dissapear for many years and return appearing younger, somehow. He gathered new eccentric cats for the regime, traveled the world in disguise, and plundered the great secrets of the world for his patron. He even gathered the patrons themselves for a formal alliance with Kokai - one which would have ended badly for the cat, if it hadn't been for his Leviathan patron bodily intervening for the first time. After several decades of ruling, Frost passed her crown to Alderbert. It is said she bodily ascended, but those who paid close attention noticed the appearance of a mysterious Solar warlock known only as the Arbiter - a new form given by Brambleshanks so Frost could enjoy the centuries as she wished. Brambleshanks himself finally gave up the ghost in 1599, when he returned from his latest dissapearance looking ancient and content. After a grand Ball, he ascended to heaven on a grand outstretched paw - a public miracle so grand that his divinity was forever cemented among South Nafenans.
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