Post by Leopardstorm on Dec 2, 2012 20:37:28 GMT -5
Character Name: Brownstar
Character Age: 40 moons
Gender: Male
Desired Character Clan: Lightningclan
Desired Position: Leader
Short Character Description: A huge dark brown tabby with amber eyes.
Character Description:
He's a mackerel tabby to be precise, with dark brown fur and thick stripes. His eyes are amber, and not particularly striking. When compared to other cats, he is one of, if not the, largest cats in all the clans. Brownstar has a stocky frame, and is rather thick all around, with medium length fur. His paws are big, and conceal extremely long and sharp claws. He has a slightly shorter than average tail. His entire body is well muscled, proof of the hard work that Brownstar put into becoming a fierce and mighty warrior. He has several scars all around him, the most notable being a multiple long slashes down his right shoulder and a smaller one across the side of his face, just missing his left eye.
Character Personality:
Brownstar lives for fighting. To him, there is nothing like the thrill of a battle, the heat of the moment in which he feels truly alive. Whenever a conflict happens, he is quick to throw himself into the middle of it. In his apprentice and young warrior days, Brownstar didn't see the purpose of diplomacy at all, instead preferring to solve problems with his claws and fangs. Instead of dealing with enemies closer to his size and age, he always threw himself at the strongest opponent he could find at the moment. With this attitude, he quickly became an experienced fighter, and developed a habit of striving to improve in between each battle. If he looses to another cat, he will reflect on what he did wrong and work to fix those flaws. Should he ever face the winner again, he will not stop until he either has his revenge or they render him incapable of continuing. However, the chances of this happening have decreased as he has grown older, and more willing to think before he acts. The number of invasions on other clan's territories that were led by him has shrunk to almost zero, and the number of trespassing cats from enemy clans that were chased off with claw marks on their pelts has significantly decreased. Nevertheless, as leader he is not willing to allow any of the other clans to think that they can get away with coming onto their territory and stealing prey.
When it comes to the life of a warrior, Brownstar is definitely a fighter. He is quite capable of being stealthy and sneaking up on the enemy, but for him it doesn't translate well into hunting. He has a nasty habit of talking loudly when they aren't finding anything, often scaring off nearby prey. Neither does he have the patience to move stealthily through the forest until he comes across a mouse, and then stalk it everywhere. Most likely he'll just trample around everywhere, further decreasing his already abysmal chances at getting lucky. If he succeeds in tracking something down, his hunting skills are around average, if a little below. However, he often doesn't kill the prey quickly enough to stop it from alerting everything else in the area. For the most part, he is not a desirable hunting partner. Nor does he have the attention span to be on sentry duty. Before his shift is even half over he will start focusing on things other than his job, making it easy for cats to sneak past him. He is willing to do any task required of him,(such as escorting the medicine cat to get herbs or moving things in the camp) and generally tries to do it quickly and efficiently, although too many odd jobs will get him complaining about the lack of anything better to do. Instead of all of these, he enjoys patrolling. This gives him the greatest chance of seeing some excitement, and even if nothing happens the act makes him feel important. Brownstar is a cat that is constantly moving, and walking around the territory often gives him a way to expend that energy. He loves tracking down potential threats and facing them, and the possibility of adventure calls to him. No matter how often he goes on patrols, they will never grow old to him. As a leader, he uses his authority to go on them as often as possible, and now never does anything less interesting.
In social situations he is not quite as adept. Although by no means shy, Brownstar can have trouble properly expressing himself at times. He is not capable of long and flowery speeches, unable to find the words that he needs to describe how he feels. When addressing a large group of cats, he says things quickly and precisely, getting straight to the point. He is also painfully honest and blunt. Even when telling the truth is the wrong thing to do, he tends to just give his actual opinion. Bluffing is the only kind of lie that he can tell that will not be instantly seen through by all but the dumbest of cats.
Brownstar has a heavy bias against cats joining the clan. If they're six moons or younger he can stand them, and even come to accept them fully as a member of the clan. If they're older, however, he is of the belief that they will never be able to fully adopt the clan life, and will refuse to allow them to join his clan. He does not try to pretend that there's some other reason for refusing them. If a queen should come with kits and try to join, he will allow the queen to stay only for as long as the kits need her.
He does not play favorites. If one cat gets in trouble for breaking the Warrior Code, then every other cat that commits the same offense will get in trouble also. In his eyes, no cat is worth more than others. Nor does he pick on specific cats for unfair reasons. Every one of them has some sort of use, even if it is not great and noticeable. He tries his hardest to respect these positive qualities, and is not the kind of leader that allows one of his cats to live with a dishonorable name.
That does not mean that he tolerates misbehavior, however. Disrespectful kits and apprentices will get severely punished, and he will not hesitate to delay and apprentice or warrior ceremony simply because they disregard the rules. When it comes to discipline, he is no-nonsense, always focusing on the problem. One good deed does not excuse breaking the warrior code in his book, and he does not go easy on those that have committed multiple offenses. His punishments range from doing nothing but caring for the elders for a moon to delaying ceremonies to outcasting a particularly troublesome cat from the clan. He wouldn't do the last one without an extremely good reason, however, only when a cat has either committed a horrific crime or proven that they cannot be trusted.
He is incredibly impatient, expecting results immediately. If he wants something done and it doesn't happen right away, he can quickly become irritable and snappish. Cats tend to get more severe punishments when he is in one of these moods, and he becomes much less fair across the board. It is not at all hard to get him mad, and often times he goes off by himself until he calms down.
How did you find COTN?: Found one of your cbox advertisements on another site.
Character History:
Brownstar was born as Brownkit, son of Thrushfang and Mudheart. He had two brothers, Toadkit and Yewkit. There was nothing unusual about his childhood, with Mudheart raising them as well as any queen and Thrushfang remaining somewhat distant. He was the biggest and most aggressive kit in the nursery, soon winning play fights against even the older kits. He behaved surprisingly well, always listening to his mother. In exchange, she tended to favor him over his less obedient brothers. This, in turn, caused him to become a little distant from them, but they all still got along well enough.
When six moons came, he and his brothers all became apprentices as usual. He was assigned to Sorrelcloud, whose calm and patient nature often clashed with Brownpaw's easily excited and/or angered one. Since the clans were at peace at the moment, Sorrelcloud focused mostly on training Brownpaw's hunting skills, which never went well. Bored with the lack of excitement that he had expected and frustrated with being forced to try and inevitably fail at a boring activity, he soon started joining his brothers in causing mischief. While their mentors let hem get away with stirring trouble, however, Sorrelcloud quickly put a stop to Brownpaw's involvement. Now stuck mostly doing chores for the elders, he was even more frustrated, taking it out on his clan mates until Sorrelcloud started focusing on battle training. He excelled there, even though his mentor wasn't very good with training. With something to do that he could actually see results in, Brownpaw was happy, and became a more average apprentice.
His first battle was not against cats of an enemy clan, however, and caused little but sorrow for him. Sorrelcloud had taken him on morning patrol with two others cats, Fogfoot and Hailwhisker. It started out like any typical patrol, checking out and remarking borders, until Hailwhisker came across the scent of dog. They started to follow it, figuring that it would be a lone creature that they could chase away. Instead, there was an entire pack. Five dogs were on that territory that day, although the patrol only encountered three of them. The other two were still young, and not much of a threat. The three that stood there were all fully grown and quite vicious looking. Even though they attempted to stay quiet, Brownpaw did not quite succeed and alerted all three to their presence. As the dogs approached them, Sorrelcoud and Hailwhisker distracted them so that Fogfoot and Brownpaw could go get help. Brownpaw secretly stayed behind while Fogfoot ran to the camp, and witnessed what happened next.
Hailwhisker and Sorrelcloud were not fighters, and no match for the dogs. They put up a good fight, but they knew that losing was inevitable. Instead, they tried to stall the dogs for as long as they possibly could, completely unaware that Sorrelcloud's apprentice was still there. Hailwhisker fell first, cornered by two dogs and no match for their jaws. While they were distracted, the final dog closed in on Sorrelcloud, who was already severely injured. If Brownpaw hadn't jumped in at that moment, his mentor would be dead. As it was, he was easily thrown off, and soon all three had switched their attention to him. If the help that Fogfoot had left for hadn't come at that moment, Brownpaw wouldn't have been more than a foolish apprentice that had tried to take on something too strong for him and failed. As it was, he was rescued with barely a scratch on him, while Hailwhisker was incontestably dead and Sorrelcloud in critical condition.
For the next moon until his mentor was no longer in danger of joining Starclan's ranks, Brownpaw did little but worry and keep Sorrelcloud company when he could. He had not liked his mentor very much, but he had respected him and knew that there were worse mentors out there. Now that he was faced with the possibility of losing him, Brownpaw saw all the good things about Sorrelcloud. Eventually his mentor recovered, but his leg was so badly injured that he would never be able to use it again, thus causing him to be unable to stay a warrior. He was moved to the elder's den, and the leader, Pigeonstar, gave Brownpaw a new mentor.
Beeclaw was a fierce and proud warrior, one of the best in the clan. He took his job as mentor very seriously, and trained Brownpaw hard. The tom was harsh and strict,unforgiving of mistakes. They spent little time hunting, mostly practicing fighting all day long until his apprentice collapsed exhausted into his nest at night. Brownpaw was kept too busy to think about what had happened, and channeled any negative feelings into his training. Soon enough he went on a patrol that got into a fight with an intruder, and he found a thirst for battle that training did little to quench. He was energetic and impatient, but still a model apprentice. Hard-working and disciplined, he did well enough that he became a warrior at the same time as his brothers, despite the moon of doing nothing. Toadpaw became Toadfang, Yewpaw became Yewfoot, and Brownpaw became Brownclaw.
He also became quite arrogant and full of himself, firm in his belief that might made right. Being capable of beating a good deal of the other warriors did nothing to help matters, either. Pigeonstar gave him his first apprentice in hopes of bringing him down to earth a little bit, but Brownclaw became worse if anything. He was proud of himself for getting an apprentice, and confident in his ability to train Birchpaw. The only problem was, Birchpaw was a weak and timid cat, hardly capable of fighting despite his mentor's best efforts at training. It did not take long for Brownclaw to become frustrated and give up on his apprentice, assigning him only the most difficult of tasks if he had to at all. It took a good tongue lashing from Beeclaw and a guilt trip from Sorrelcloud before he finally agreed to try again, focusing on other things. Although Birchpaw couldn't fight, it didn't take long for Brownclaw to notice that he was good at hunting, and a quite capable tracker. He also had great senses, and was actually the key in helping one patrol locate an intruding rogue, even if he wasn't useful in confronting it. After that incident, he only trained for another moon before becoming Birchnose.
Having learned his lesson in finding uses in other cats, Brownclaw calmed down some, focusing more on serving his clan the way that he did best. Soon enough, he got another apprentice, Thistlekit. She was much more of a challenge than Birchnose was, being more competent at fighting but dumber than a mouse, unable to find prey without stumbling on it first, horridly disrespectful to pretty much everyone, and with an unpredictable nature to boot. Her mother had given up on her, and most warriors hoped that if they got an apprentice, it wasn't her. This apprentice was the kind that refused to listen to her mentor, preferring to do her own thing.
Within two moons Brownclaw had not only gotten her to listen to those in authority, but also transformed her into a model apprentice. She was resentful and rebellious at first, but as he started to train her properly she started acting good without being threatened to be cleaning fleas off of the elders first. He trained her like his mentors had before, and she showed good results.
Halfway through her training, the deputy at the time, Pinefur, died from greencough. Pigeonstar decided to promote Brownclaw to deputy. He served under his leader for several moons after Thistlepaw became Thistlestorm, until finally the elderly leader lost his last life in his sleep. Brownclaw became Brownstar and promoted a warrior named Lightface to deputy. She was good at her job, and quite capable, but growing older already. An injury coupled with her age forced her to retire to the elder's den, and he selected the promising Fireshadow to replace her.
Extra Notes: Yes, Brownstar gives names traditionally. Once again, if anyone wants to use the same prefix as one of the cats that I have mentioned here, they are either be dead or renamed. Also, sorry for inconsistencies in names, I kept writing Sorrelcloud as Redcloud, no word on the rest.
Oh, hey, I never mentioned my roleplaying credentials, did I? Here they are, if you're interested:
Several years roleplaying on Neopets, member of one Pokemon roleplaying site(now dead), admin of another Pokemon site(also now dead), and stalker of several others, currently mostly of the Warriors genre. I range from semi literate to literate, although have been out of practice lately so more towards the former.
As for warriors, I have read all of the books up to the fourth series, where I stopped somewhere in the second book. I loved them when I read them, although my opinion of the quality of the writing has gone down somewhat, and I now mostly pay attention to the fanbase. I make and rate names traditionally, using Ailuronymy as a guide.
Character Age: 40 moons
Gender: Male
Desired Character Clan: Lightningclan
Desired Position: Leader
Short Character Description: A huge dark brown tabby with amber eyes.
Character Description:
He's a mackerel tabby to be precise, with dark brown fur and thick stripes. His eyes are amber, and not particularly striking. When compared to other cats, he is one of, if not the, largest cats in all the clans. Brownstar has a stocky frame, and is rather thick all around, with medium length fur. His paws are big, and conceal extremely long and sharp claws. He has a slightly shorter than average tail. His entire body is well muscled, proof of the hard work that Brownstar put into becoming a fierce and mighty warrior. He has several scars all around him, the most notable being a multiple long slashes down his right shoulder and a smaller one across the side of his face, just missing his left eye.
Character Personality:
Brownstar lives for fighting. To him, there is nothing like the thrill of a battle, the heat of the moment in which he feels truly alive. Whenever a conflict happens, he is quick to throw himself into the middle of it. In his apprentice and young warrior days, Brownstar didn't see the purpose of diplomacy at all, instead preferring to solve problems with his claws and fangs. Instead of dealing with enemies closer to his size and age, he always threw himself at the strongest opponent he could find at the moment. With this attitude, he quickly became an experienced fighter, and developed a habit of striving to improve in between each battle. If he looses to another cat, he will reflect on what he did wrong and work to fix those flaws. Should he ever face the winner again, he will not stop until he either has his revenge or they render him incapable of continuing. However, the chances of this happening have decreased as he has grown older, and more willing to think before he acts. The number of invasions on other clan's territories that were led by him has shrunk to almost zero, and the number of trespassing cats from enemy clans that were chased off with claw marks on their pelts has significantly decreased. Nevertheless, as leader he is not willing to allow any of the other clans to think that they can get away with coming onto their territory and stealing prey.
When it comes to the life of a warrior, Brownstar is definitely a fighter. He is quite capable of being stealthy and sneaking up on the enemy, but for him it doesn't translate well into hunting. He has a nasty habit of talking loudly when they aren't finding anything, often scaring off nearby prey. Neither does he have the patience to move stealthily through the forest until he comes across a mouse, and then stalk it everywhere. Most likely he'll just trample around everywhere, further decreasing his already abysmal chances at getting lucky. If he succeeds in tracking something down, his hunting skills are around average, if a little below. However, he often doesn't kill the prey quickly enough to stop it from alerting everything else in the area. For the most part, he is not a desirable hunting partner. Nor does he have the attention span to be on sentry duty. Before his shift is even half over he will start focusing on things other than his job, making it easy for cats to sneak past him. He is willing to do any task required of him,(such as escorting the medicine cat to get herbs or moving things in the camp) and generally tries to do it quickly and efficiently, although too many odd jobs will get him complaining about the lack of anything better to do. Instead of all of these, he enjoys patrolling. This gives him the greatest chance of seeing some excitement, and even if nothing happens the act makes him feel important. Brownstar is a cat that is constantly moving, and walking around the territory often gives him a way to expend that energy. He loves tracking down potential threats and facing them, and the possibility of adventure calls to him. No matter how often he goes on patrols, they will never grow old to him. As a leader, he uses his authority to go on them as often as possible, and now never does anything less interesting.
In social situations he is not quite as adept. Although by no means shy, Brownstar can have trouble properly expressing himself at times. He is not capable of long and flowery speeches, unable to find the words that he needs to describe how he feels. When addressing a large group of cats, he says things quickly and precisely, getting straight to the point. He is also painfully honest and blunt. Even when telling the truth is the wrong thing to do, he tends to just give his actual opinion. Bluffing is the only kind of lie that he can tell that will not be instantly seen through by all but the dumbest of cats.
Brownstar has a heavy bias against cats joining the clan. If they're six moons or younger he can stand them, and even come to accept them fully as a member of the clan. If they're older, however, he is of the belief that they will never be able to fully adopt the clan life, and will refuse to allow them to join his clan. He does not try to pretend that there's some other reason for refusing them. If a queen should come with kits and try to join, he will allow the queen to stay only for as long as the kits need her.
He does not play favorites. If one cat gets in trouble for breaking the Warrior Code, then every other cat that commits the same offense will get in trouble also. In his eyes, no cat is worth more than others. Nor does he pick on specific cats for unfair reasons. Every one of them has some sort of use, even if it is not great and noticeable. He tries his hardest to respect these positive qualities, and is not the kind of leader that allows one of his cats to live with a dishonorable name.
That does not mean that he tolerates misbehavior, however. Disrespectful kits and apprentices will get severely punished, and he will not hesitate to delay and apprentice or warrior ceremony simply because they disregard the rules. When it comes to discipline, he is no-nonsense, always focusing on the problem. One good deed does not excuse breaking the warrior code in his book, and he does not go easy on those that have committed multiple offenses. His punishments range from doing nothing but caring for the elders for a moon to delaying ceremonies to outcasting a particularly troublesome cat from the clan. He wouldn't do the last one without an extremely good reason, however, only when a cat has either committed a horrific crime or proven that they cannot be trusted.
He is incredibly impatient, expecting results immediately. If he wants something done and it doesn't happen right away, he can quickly become irritable and snappish. Cats tend to get more severe punishments when he is in one of these moods, and he becomes much less fair across the board. It is not at all hard to get him mad, and often times he goes off by himself until he calms down.
How did you find COTN?: Found one of your cbox advertisements on another site.
Character History:
Brownstar was born as Brownkit, son of Thrushfang and Mudheart. He had two brothers, Toadkit and Yewkit. There was nothing unusual about his childhood, with Mudheart raising them as well as any queen and Thrushfang remaining somewhat distant. He was the biggest and most aggressive kit in the nursery, soon winning play fights against even the older kits. He behaved surprisingly well, always listening to his mother. In exchange, she tended to favor him over his less obedient brothers. This, in turn, caused him to become a little distant from them, but they all still got along well enough.
When six moons came, he and his brothers all became apprentices as usual. He was assigned to Sorrelcloud, whose calm and patient nature often clashed with Brownpaw's easily excited and/or angered one. Since the clans were at peace at the moment, Sorrelcloud focused mostly on training Brownpaw's hunting skills, which never went well. Bored with the lack of excitement that he had expected and frustrated with being forced to try and inevitably fail at a boring activity, he soon started joining his brothers in causing mischief. While their mentors let hem get away with stirring trouble, however, Sorrelcloud quickly put a stop to Brownpaw's involvement. Now stuck mostly doing chores for the elders, he was even more frustrated, taking it out on his clan mates until Sorrelcloud started focusing on battle training. He excelled there, even though his mentor wasn't very good with training. With something to do that he could actually see results in, Brownpaw was happy, and became a more average apprentice.
His first battle was not against cats of an enemy clan, however, and caused little but sorrow for him. Sorrelcloud had taken him on morning patrol with two others cats, Fogfoot and Hailwhisker. It started out like any typical patrol, checking out and remarking borders, until Hailwhisker came across the scent of dog. They started to follow it, figuring that it would be a lone creature that they could chase away. Instead, there was an entire pack. Five dogs were on that territory that day, although the patrol only encountered three of them. The other two were still young, and not much of a threat. The three that stood there were all fully grown and quite vicious looking. Even though they attempted to stay quiet, Brownpaw did not quite succeed and alerted all three to their presence. As the dogs approached them, Sorrelcoud and Hailwhisker distracted them so that Fogfoot and Brownpaw could go get help. Brownpaw secretly stayed behind while Fogfoot ran to the camp, and witnessed what happened next.
Hailwhisker and Sorrelcloud were not fighters, and no match for the dogs. They put up a good fight, but they knew that losing was inevitable. Instead, they tried to stall the dogs for as long as they possibly could, completely unaware that Sorrelcloud's apprentice was still there. Hailwhisker fell first, cornered by two dogs and no match for their jaws. While they were distracted, the final dog closed in on Sorrelcloud, who was already severely injured. If Brownpaw hadn't jumped in at that moment, his mentor would be dead. As it was, he was easily thrown off, and soon all three had switched their attention to him. If the help that Fogfoot had left for hadn't come at that moment, Brownpaw wouldn't have been more than a foolish apprentice that had tried to take on something too strong for him and failed. As it was, he was rescued with barely a scratch on him, while Hailwhisker was incontestably dead and Sorrelcloud in critical condition.
For the next moon until his mentor was no longer in danger of joining Starclan's ranks, Brownpaw did little but worry and keep Sorrelcloud company when he could. He had not liked his mentor very much, but he had respected him and knew that there were worse mentors out there. Now that he was faced with the possibility of losing him, Brownpaw saw all the good things about Sorrelcloud. Eventually his mentor recovered, but his leg was so badly injured that he would never be able to use it again, thus causing him to be unable to stay a warrior. He was moved to the elder's den, and the leader, Pigeonstar, gave Brownpaw a new mentor.
Beeclaw was a fierce and proud warrior, one of the best in the clan. He took his job as mentor very seriously, and trained Brownpaw hard. The tom was harsh and strict,unforgiving of mistakes. They spent little time hunting, mostly practicing fighting all day long until his apprentice collapsed exhausted into his nest at night. Brownpaw was kept too busy to think about what had happened, and channeled any negative feelings into his training. Soon enough he went on a patrol that got into a fight with an intruder, and he found a thirst for battle that training did little to quench. He was energetic and impatient, but still a model apprentice. Hard-working and disciplined, he did well enough that he became a warrior at the same time as his brothers, despite the moon of doing nothing. Toadpaw became Toadfang, Yewpaw became Yewfoot, and Brownpaw became Brownclaw.
He also became quite arrogant and full of himself, firm in his belief that might made right. Being capable of beating a good deal of the other warriors did nothing to help matters, either. Pigeonstar gave him his first apprentice in hopes of bringing him down to earth a little bit, but Brownclaw became worse if anything. He was proud of himself for getting an apprentice, and confident in his ability to train Birchpaw. The only problem was, Birchpaw was a weak and timid cat, hardly capable of fighting despite his mentor's best efforts at training. It did not take long for Brownclaw to become frustrated and give up on his apprentice, assigning him only the most difficult of tasks if he had to at all. It took a good tongue lashing from Beeclaw and a guilt trip from Sorrelcloud before he finally agreed to try again, focusing on other things. Although Birchpaw couldn't fight, it didn't take long for Brownclaw to notice that he was good at hunting, and a quite capable tracker. He also had great senses, and was actually the key in helping one patrol locate an intruding rogue, even if he wasn't useful in confronting it. After that incident, he only trained for another moon before becoming Birchnose.
Having learned his lesson in finding uses in other cats, Brownclaw calmed down some, focusing more on serving his clan the way that he did best. Soon enough, he got another apprentice, Thistlekit. She was much more of a challenge than Birchnose was, being more competent at fighting but dumber than a mouse, unable to find prey without stumbling on it first, horridly disrespectful to pretty much everyone, and with an unpredictable nature to boot. Her mother had given up on her, and most warriors hoped that if they got an apprentice, it wasn't her. This apprentice was the kind that refused to listen to her mentor, preferring to do her own thing.
Within two moons Brownclaw had not only gotten her to listen to those in authority, but also transformed her into a model apprentice. She was resentful and rebellious at first, but as he started to train her properly she started acting good without being threatened to be cleaning fleas off of the elders first. He trained her like his mentors had before, and she showed good results.
Halfway through her training, the deputy at the time, Pinefur, died from greencough. Pigeonstar decided to promote Brownclaw to deputy. He served under his leader for several moons after Thistlepaw became Thistlestorm, until finally the elderly leader lost his last life in his sleep. Brownclaw became Brownstar and promoted a warrior named Lightface to deputy. She was good at her job, and quite capable, but growing older already. An injury coupled with her age forced her to retire to the elder's den, and he selected the promising Fireshadow to replace her.
Extra Notes: Yes, Brownstar gives names traditionally. Once again, if anyone wants to use the same prefix as one of the cats that I have mentioned here, they are either be dead or renamed. Also, sorry for inconsistencies in names, I kept writing Sorrelcloud as Redcloud, no word on the rest.
Oh, hey, I never mentioned my roleplaying credentials, did I? Here they are, if you're interested:
Several years roleplaying on Neopets, member of one Pokemon roleplaying site(now dead), admin of another Pokemon site(also now dead), and stalker of several others, currently mostly of the Warriors genre. I range from semi literate to literate, although have been out of practice lately so more towards the former.
As for warriors, I have read all of the books up to the fourth series, where I stopped somewhere in the second book. I loved them when I read them, although my opinion of the quality of the writing has gone down somewhat, and I now mostly pay attention to the fanbase. I make and rate names traditionally, using Ailuronymy as a guide.