How Could Ashfur Do What He Did? by WhiteWhiskers

WhiteWhiskers poses questions about Ashfur’s abilities in The Broken Code.

A few months ago, I finished The Broken Code. I am left with a big, unanswered (and probably unanswerable) question: how was Ashfur able to do the things he did?

When he was alive, Ashfur was an ordinary warrior. There was nothing unusual about him, except for his unhealthy obsession with Squirrelflight. Then he is killed by Hollyleaf and is admitted to StarClan, for reasons that are not entirely clear. Perhaps they felt that his murder had paid for his crimes, or perhaps they agreed that his only crime was that “he loved too much.” However that may be, he fooled all of StarClan and somehow acquired powers that no cat before him, living or dead, ever had.

He sent false visions to Shadowsight*, pretending to be from StarClan. He manipulated Shadowsight into calling for the punishment of code breakers and saying that the cure for Bramblestar’s illness** was to place him in a nest in the snow on the moor, killing him so that Ashfur could take possession of Bramblestar’s body.

He cut off communication between living cats and StarClan, apparently by weaving a barrier of sticks and vines.

He took control of recently dead warriors and turned them into zombies who he could control with his mind, and forced them to fight for him.

How was he able to do all these things? We don’t know, and the authors don’t offer us any clues. (The authors never offer any explanation of how supernatural events work in the Warriors world. There simply has to be an existential threat to the clans in every main story arc and, in TBC, Ashfur was it. ) Ashfur at one point claims he is cleverer than other cats but, if so, he showed no sign of it while he was alive. It was certainly not very clever of him to think that he could try to kill Squirrelflight’s supposed kits or threaten to expose their secret at the gathering, without consequences. He was not clever enough to anticipate and avoid Hollyleaf’s fatal attack on him. What we do know is that all of StarClan together, all the great leaders, wise medicine cats, and skilled warriors, were unable to figure out what he had done or come up with a way to stop him.

It feels unsatisfactory to end this article without answering the question posed in the title, but I fear that that is the best I can do. I welcome the suggestions of other readers who might have ideas about what made Ashfur’s powers possible.

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* Were the visions Shadowsight received in Tigerheart’s Shadow (which helped him lead his family back to the Lake Territories) or in Tawynypelt’s Clan (which sent him to help the Tribe Cats) sent by Ashfur? We don’t know. Ashfur might have sent these visions just to establish Shadowsight’s bona fides as a visionary, but how could he have known about a future event threatening the Tribe?
**Was Bramblestar’s unknown and untreatable disease caused by Ashfur, or did he just take advantage of it? Again, we’ll never know for sure.