N.B: This is a guide to creating Hunteresque, traditional clans. It encourages rigidity in prefixes using English plants and animals, since the books are set there. You can use this as a looser reference, I guess, but it has a specific audience in mind. By that, I mean myself.
So!
You've decided to make the terrible, terrible mistake of writing your own fanclans.Sounds cool, right? It's like.. Creating a universe. Straight from your brain. It's rad, pretty much. Haha. Joke's on you all. Once you start this, you're never going to stop. It seems simple, right?You may be muttering to yourself: 'Why the hell would someone need a guide for this? It's really that easy. All you need is a name for them and a territory!'
Well.
There's more to clans than that. A lot more. Their spirituality, their history, even their prey. If there's literally no way to establish it from what you've provided, then you need to think again.
I must adviseyou, though. It isn't as easy as you believe.You must think of everything, or someone like me will nit-pick the poor thing to death. In order to create a believable land for your characters to dwell in, you must first think: what are the conventions- the rules?
First and foremost: the names. Oh God, the naming process. This is the thing that has been botched so bloody often it hurts. How sad it makes me to things like.. Deathclan, or Suicideclan. Please. No. Pshaw.
What kind of an edgelord would even...?
The thing to do that won't elicit the reaction of immediate reaction of cringe to the max is just to name it after a founder, or its territory. Some examples that don't sound like the brainchild of My Immortal could be taken from Warriors, or a few clans I've seen, like Marshclan, Larkclan (self-advertisement, well done,) and Martenclan.
As you can see here, all three of these names are named after fauna found in English territories, or it may be that the prefix is akin to a founder, or someone close to them. The easiest thing to do here is name the clan before writing a backstory/etc, so you can build it around it.
Next, the part that very few people even remember to do: a territory, and a realistic one with prey that is actually native to it and herbs that can actually grow on it in real life. You will not see many Fallow deer in Scotland, so if you want your Clan there, don't play it off as some regular occurrence, nor will your cats come across a Kea. The best way to do this is to actually find a geographical location for your cats, like, say, somewhere in Oxfordshire. I don't need to talk you through this, but compiling a herb list or a prey list based off the general area you'd like using research (you're going to get good at that, I assure you,) is quite helpful.
The last part is actually giving your clan a backstory or a history- it feels quite gratifying to make your territory feel lived-in, and all the rest. Like territories, this is sort of a been there-done that for a lot of people. As long as mass murder isn't a main part of the story, you'll be fine.
I'll just end this with a bunch of helpful links and all that.
Territories (to be updated.)
New Forest – South English area & the setting of the first Arc. Suggested for AUs or some bidness.
Caddow – An area in Exmoor. Bonus points if you include the Beast of Exmoor in the Clan's lore.
Worldbuilding in General(meh)
eheh general warriors worldbuilding rambling ;;
