Welcome to the history of Leader of the Flock! Here's where all the lore is kept. If you want to play the roleplay blind and without any knowledge of the history of the forests, go for it! You don't have to read this! Music: Cozy Mall from somewhere I forgot, credits to whoever made it! Art by me, created in FireAlpaca! -- - Thousands of years ago... - Many, many miles away from twolegplaces or even animals, there was an empty, humid land. There weren't any trees anywhere, just lots of grass, with the occasional shrub. One day, in a faraway rainforest, there was a tanager, but no one remembered his name. When he was sleeping, he got a dream, telling him to step in a pond guarded by a crest-bearing beast. When the tanager woke up, it was very foggy. He looked for a pond guarded by the crested beast, before running into a giant cockatoo. She introduced her name, Whirlpool, and was very kind. She even let the tanager step into the pond. As soon as he did, he was transported into the empty land. He saw someone else that was in the land too. He was a deadly macaw named Snake, but he didn't want to interact with the tanager. That night, the tanager got a vision telling him to care for the land. He did his best to take good care of it. Every day, the tanager got a new mission through his dreams. Maybe it's walking around the land. Or maybe to pull out some weeds and grasses. Soon Whirlpool came to the empty land too. As a reward for doing the tasks, the tanager was never hungry, thirsty, sick or tired. He still didn't understand why he was doing this all for, but he did it anyways. But a few weeks after it all happened, the tanager was being chased. Chased by Whirlpool and Snake, the tanager had no idea what he did wrong, but the two birds were getting closer. Even when he flew, they were still able to catch up. The tanager was nipped and tugged at and some of his feathers were ripped out. Soon, though, the tanager had enough. He suddenly knew how to get rid of the two birds, who were seemingly so nice to him in the beginning, but if he wanted to save his land, he would have to take them away. He started flying, higher and higher into the air, and he left a seed of his life behind, growing into a huge forest, filled with animals and thousands of birds, and he rose into the stars. Whirlpool and Snake were never seen again. How they disappeared is unknown, but it might have something to do with the seed and the forest. - Thousands of years ago, but more recently... - There was originally one forest, but now there are four. The Tanager's Forest, The Forest of Warblers, The Robin Wood and another forest that has very little knowledge about it. Why did they split? No one knows. No one dared to share the story of the split after it happened, since it was so devastating and even forbidden to talk about it in some forests. - Five years ago... - It was a great day in the forests. At the time, The Tanager's Forest had a thousand birds, yet the others had even more. But then there was a dark, raging thunderstorm. It rained and flashed with lightning for weeks and weeks, and many birds surprisingly passed away. When the storm went away, there were only about forty birds left in the forest, and Silver River, a wood thrush, decided to repack it with birds. So she rounded up every bird in the forest (it's a rainforest btw forgot to mention that </3) and counted them all. Including herself, there were 45. After, she asked three wise and brave birds, Prancer the northern cardinal, Tulip the blue jay and Canopy the chipping sparrow, to search the other forests for other birds who can help with restoring the population of The Tanager's Forest. A week later, only two of the birds came back. Tulip was taken down in the unknown forest that didn't seem to like outsiders. Prancer went to the rainforest named The Forest of Warblers and found 22 birds, and Canopy gathered 20 birds from the woodland named The Robin Wood. In the end, the population of The Tanager's Forest was now 86 birds. Afterwards, Silver River made a group called Silver River's Ferns, with a mission to restore the thousand birds of the forest. Silver River gave Canopy and Prancer special ranks called elders. Many birds stayed in Silver River's Ferns (can be shortened to The Ferns), but some did not want to live the life in the group and became outsiders, a life free from the ways of The Ferns. Silver River hoped that even after she was gone, the mission to return the thousand birds of The Tanager's Forest would continue for as long as it takes. However, there wasn't actually a storm. The first tanager, the creator of the forests, knew that it wasn't a storm. It was all made up. What was the real reason? It was a wipeout, a wipeout created by Whirlpool and Snake. The reason of why they did that is unknown. No one on the ground knew that the wipeout was the real reason of why the forest lost so many birds. (cont. n&c...)
✯ -- Continues from the instructions... The storm story started out as a prediction, then a rumour, then false history that everyone seems to believe. But that changed a year later... - Four years ago... - Just a few weeks after the very first elders passed away, during the night, two blue jays named Clam Shell and Misted Waters went to find food for Silver River's Ferns (the name is the same even though Silver River's gone now, Blackberry, a wood thrush, is the new leader), as food was starting to get harder to find. As the jays started to go home, a large fox started to chase them. But it wasn't a normal fox; it was a white fox with a long yellow tail that was tipped with red. As the jays were being chased, they got a vision. The wind blew strongly and made a moving picture. At first, it looked like two birds chasing one bird, and that bird flew away, leaving a dot that made a patch of trees filled with birds, and the two other birds disappeared. Then, the two birds reappeared, and when they did, all the others in the forest disappeared. When the vision wore off, the fox was nowhere to be seen, and what was left was a feather, a white feather topped with yellow and ending in red. Clam Shell and Misted Waters immediately returned to camp with the feather as proof, to tell the entire group about what just happened. When they told Rising Wave, a northern cardinal who was an elder, he directed them to a nursebird (they heal birds and connect to the stars) named Dusty who had just been promoted to the nursebird rank. The female American redstart told them that the vision was linked to a prophecy she got when she was promoted. And this was it: "Under a dark night when food is scarce, two birds will see the truth of the beginning. Through the day and through the night, the whole forest will see the truth of the beginning. Across the trees and through the stars, everyone will understand. And soon enough, after many years of discovering the truth, the forests will be reunited, and the two birds will regret their run, finishing their chase at the end of true life." A few weeks later, the jays were chosen to go to find food. The mist that day was thick, but it was expected, because recently, the patrols' conditions matched the birds' names. (Clam Shell went to find food with an American redstart named Sea Salt a few days ago and they found lots of clams near a salty lake!) As the jays approached a flowing river, they saw something invisible in the mist, but it felt visible somehow. It told the jays to mate and have chicks. - 3 years ago... - The chicks Clam Shell and Misted Waters had, Splashy, Tinge and Hopper, grew into strong jays. Splashy was great, but his life was cut short after a bear attack which took his mate as well, Minnow. Tinge became a very brave bird, and Hopper was a fine strong jay. After Blackberry passed away, Blossoming Springs was the deputy, so she became leader, and chose Hopper as the new deputy. A few days later after Hopper became deputy, he was looking for food when he saw an outsider bird who did not want anything to do with The Ferns at all. Even then, information was gathered about him. He was a red-eyed vireo named Leaping Wolf and was part of an outsider group which he didn't want to talk about. Suddenly, as they were talking, a wolf came and pounced on Hopper, but he didn't feel any pain. Instead, he was sent to the stars, not dead, just a vision. He met a red-eyed vireo, Mouse, that used to be a nursebird before he passed away. He said that he would do all the work with Leaping Wolf, so he wouldn't have to worry about him, and that he would be fine. But when the vision ended, Leaping Wolf was nowhere to be seen. There was a flash of glow where he stood, however. - 3.75 years ago... - Hopper began to notice something a few months after that vision. Birds are starting to trust the first vision (not Mouse's vision) and believe it was real. The question is, what did Mouse do to Leaping Wolf? It was very interesting... Misted Waters seemed to have been here before Mouse's vision, and after, she disappeared. Clam Shell reported, though, that she became a wisp of starlight suddenly and rose into the stars. Everything just became so confusing... Today, no one that was there 4 years ago is here today in The Tanager's Forest, and most likely in the other forests as well. The leader now is a Steller's jay named Peach, and the deputy's Smoke the chipping sparrow. The goal's simple, to fulfil the prophecy and make the original dream come true: fill The Tanager's Forest with its original population of a thousand birds once again. -- I write too much help
