Wildcat's page

About Wildcat

Party Role: Spell Support (buffing, healing)
Campaign Trait: Stowaway

Description: Wildcat, or just Cat, is not particularly tall, but her wiry builds adds an illusion of height. Her skin is dark toned and her features sharp, but her eyes are an uncommonly light blue that clashes her otherwise obvious Shoanti blood. Life in the wilderness has wrapped her in lithe muscle and lined her skin with scars, each carrying a story of its own. Dark hair frames her face, often untended and wild, while she drapes her frame in animal skins and linens, the later taken from caravans passing between cities. While this makes for an odd look, it remains functional for wilderness travel.

Backstory: Cat has little memory of her parents, nor of the struggle they went through on her behalf. Her mother was a Shoanti craftsman and her father was a Chelaxian merchant. They often met for secret trysts and when her mother became pregnant the coupling was revealed. Her tribe refused to accept it, demanding they both leave and never return. They made an effort to remain nearby for the first two years of Cat's life, hoping for reconciliation, but eventually they accepted their fate and set off for the coast. The trip to Magnimar was a difficult one but the promise of a better life kept them moving. Magnimar proved no better for them and, after scraping together enough coin, they purchased passage to the colonies. Cat was three when the ship came apart in a storm, an event that plagues her to this day with fear of turbulent weather.

Cat washed up on an uninhabited island in the Shackles among the driftwood and corpses. A clutch of giant iguanadons, drawn to the beach by the promise of easy meat, stumbled upon the child and opted to make her family instead of food. They taught her to survive through demonstration, showed her how to catch food and hide from predators. She learned to read their movements and sounds as though it were speech. She learned to navigate in darkness, hiding in caves to avoid blistering heat and angry fauna. By the time she was five she could climb and swim like a natural and she killed her first crocodile when she was eight. The meat fed her family for a week. Still, even as she grew comfortable with her life among the beasts she was haunted in dreams by a couple that she couldn't recall meeting, and a decorated silver snuff box that she keeps to this day despite not knowing the source.

Her connection to nature was strong and she found its blessings easily. She was able to call upon it for magic to tend wounds, to strengthen her body and to supply her needs. She would wander the island from end to end, longing to cross the deep blue prison and see what lay beyond. She was twelve when the first ship came, seeking resupply after battling a storm, and she watched the sailors as they made camp. She listened to their words and remembered but the sparks of memory in her mind couldn't override her fear. When the ship sailed off she believed that she had missed her only shot. The next ship to arrive was a beacon of hope but her attempt at contact met with capture. The pirates, who had been scouring the islands for animal specimens to sell in Sargava, were not above trafficking in human cargo. From her cage she studied their language, biting and scratching any who came near and adopting the name Wildcar, the term they frequently used to describe her. When the ship put into a small port she took the opportunity to escape alongside her iguanadon companion. Knowing they would come looking for her, she snuck aboard the first ship leaving port, the Jenivere.

Personality: Cat is insatiably curious about people and civilization, and it is because of this curiosity that she has learned to understand common with some fluency despite years of neglect. She finds the flow of the language soothing and she will sometimes listen through a conversation without speaking because of this. Having learned common aboard a pirate ship, her own speech is peppered by colorful (and often misused) descriptors and coarse language. She makes great effort to mirror the actions she has observed in others, trying to fit in with the culture of a people that she is both fascinated and terrified by. Her sharp attention to detail and knowledge of the land outside the city is an asset that she hopes to leverage in her efforts to acclimate.

Her feral nature shows despite her efforts. She is quick to react defensively in response to a perceived threat and her childhood in the wilds has shown her that threats can come in any form. She retains some feral behaviors such as a fear of being surrounded and a dislike of sudden changes in her environment. This causes her no end of embarrassment when her reactions prove unfounded, but they've saved her life frequently enough to not discount them.