The Great Split

## Summary

**The Great Split** is a traditional cat folklore story and a historical event that took place long ago.

It is said that in the ancient days of Scaramoon, all the cats lived in one giant territory somewhere near modern day Erecher. The area was extremely overpopulated, Ktition was overhunted and was now scarce. The large amount of cats made it difficult to uphold rules and there was no proper leader. Everyone would fend for themselves, and there was always fights breaking out over disagreements of prey, rules and the structure of how everything worked. Eventually all these cats had gotten sick of their way of life and decided to do something about it. All the cats voted and elected one of the most popular and well respected cats to represent each cats opinion on the matter, and it had come to a conclusion that all the cats should split directions based on the environment best suited for them. There were 5 leading cats; Erecher, Tao, Shinsar, Warpent and Kinray, who each wanted to find a different area to live in. Kinray wanted to find a hot biome that suited her thin fur, and she set off with other cats who wanted to live somewhere hot. Warpent enjoyed the water, so he voyaged to the ocean alongside the other cats who wanted the same. Shinsar had thick fur best suited to cold weather, so she and other thick-furred cats went off to the distant snow-capped mountains. Tao was an active cat who wanted lots of room to run freely, so she went off to the meadows and plains with her cats. And Erecher was content with the forest, so he adventured for a few moons before deciding the place they started was the best spot for a home. Each of the new territories and groups were named after the leading cats, however there were some cats remaining that were not happy with this great split. They had no proper territory, and they were furious with these groups of cats for not following traditions of staying in the long ancient lands, yet they did not want to join Erecher. They wanted the ancient lands for themselves, and soon became a group of Feloprasin who named themselves Oparin that would constantly fight and invade the neighbouring areas.

After many moons this new split was otherwise working very well apart from the Oparin. Since the cats were originally all one large group, they had shared beliefs and language, but after a long time of being apart in seperate groups, their language dialects and accents began to differ from each other, their beliefs slightly changed as did their folklore. They lived in peace for the first few moons before wars begun between territories for land. This split was the origin of the modern day territories, and the alliances and wars between them. The Erecher tradition of Sparkers had begun, and Tao had declared themselves the capital because they were the most developed. Meanwhile Kinray was falling apart within themselves with a war-torn environment, and Shinsar believed they were the most connected to Lord Eriar because of their high altitude, while also having an incredibly strict loyalty to their leader. Warpent cats developed an incredible skill for swimming and thus had a higher advantage for defending their ocean home.