Pounamu Shelter

**Shelter** is a Pygmy Tabaxi from The Twisted Forest Clan just outside of Shinrin. **Shelter** grew up always enthralled by the stories of other's adventures. Three Feathers, **Shelter**'s uncle, would tell him of far away places with amazing people and creatures. So, upon seeing a Human house being built one day, Shelter eventually went inside it and saw incredible magical artifacts and books. This lead him to study these things and start learning a lot more about magic. **Shelter** then traveled to Shinrin, to go and see a place Three Feathers had told him about. After arriving in Shinrin, **Shelter** met up with The Jungle Campaign Party and helped them out with a couple of jobs before moving on to go and look at another Tabaxi's Clan.

## Physical Description

The Twisted Forest Clan live in an isolated pocket of rain forest at the edge of the Tabaxi homeland, here there is only one entrance, and the forest is so dense that only the smallest of creatures can move through with ease. Due to living here for the last few thousand years, the Twisted Forest Tabaxi have developed to be smaller in stature than their cousins - standing a mere 4 feet tall average, about the same size as a dwarf. **Shelter**’s red and white face and tail is accented with black arm and feet fur, black dreadlocks and emerald green eyes, he dresses in simple green robes laced with gold edging and carries a large book at his side that looks like a collection of scraps of paper and parchment. Despite his adorably innocent face there is a sharp and curious mind who loves to absorb every little detail of a good story or an interesting mystery. Whenever **Shelter** casts a spell, the colour of his eyes glows slightly and any spells he produces have a green hue to them. **Shelter** is good-natured and caring, however sometimes his curiosity (despite his motives being good) can lead to unlawful behaviour once something piques his interest. His true demeanour is typically easy to determine based on watching his tail.

## Backstory

***Shelter*** *spent most of his days climbing the thick inter-tangled trees of the Twisted Forest looking for anything interesting to look at - new flowers, creatures, unusual cloud formations and weather patterns, the most efficient route between two points… anything he could learn from and discover. However with each new discovery solved, his curiosity for finding something even more interesting became insatiable. His favourite thing to do was to listen to the stories of Three Feathers, he would spend hours telling tales of this excursions into the outer world. **Shelter**’s favourite story was that of when Three Feathers had ventured to the town of Shinrin. It was Three Feather’s first steps beyond their home forest. The Clan gifted him with a stack of bamboo to sell in the town upon arrival so he could afford some gear to aid him in his travels. However upon his arrival he found the town was under attack by orcs on the far side. He almost lost his tail as a small band of scouts had circled around the town and he fell into their ambush. He managed to escape and ran for the center of town where he saw peasants and knights all fighting off the orcs. A knight, Ser Veron Sandzkahn, gave Three Feathers a short sword and called him to battle. Being unskilled with weapons the fight was long and nearly deadly, but he managed to somehow survive. In the week that followed the victory he stayed with some coopers and aided them in fixing some of the broken patches of their home in exchange for a place to rest. Then once the building was repaired, he bid them farewell and ventured off into the great unknown with a young human merchant called Bradbury. **Shelter** knew that when he one day left the forest he wanted to go and visit this place and see for himself where Three Feathers fought.*

*Most of Three Feather’s stories centred around people conquering the land and the creatures, a lot of the Tabaxi were not agreeable to this type of behaviour, but for **Shelter**, There was a mysterious balance within these stories that he couldn’t put his finger on. A balance between nature, creatures, people, and some power called magic that seemed to evade his mind no matter how much he tried to ponder it. Three Feather’s stories only provided more questions than answers, and **Shelter** knew he would have to one day travel himself to see and understand this balance of power. **Shelter**’s oldest sibling Sapphire Bit also enjoyed the stories and left two years prior to have their own adventures. This left just **Shelter** to listen to Three Feathers’ stories as most of the other Tabaxi weren’t as inquisitive as **Shelter** was, however the storyteller was old and he passed on not long after Bit left. The next eight years of boredom felt like it was driving **Shelter** insane, he had now painstakingly mapped out the entire forest in his mind for lack of anything better to do. His mother, Distant Fire, tried her best to encourage **Shelter** in joining in the family work but **Shelter**’s mind could not cope with the monotony of each day. Occasionally he would make the delivery trips with his father, Tahi Paw, to the edge of the Main forest, but his help in the trip would usually be cut short as he would dash off into the forest at the slightest thing to spark his curiosity. His father was patient with him nonetheless, always seeming to have a deep understanding in his eyes despite the muteness of his lips. There were a couple of things helped him maintain some form of normal ness for him, and these he found at the outer edges of the tall Tabaxi forest. The Tall Tabaxi Forest divided a tribe of Orcs from several towns of Wood Elves. All three races were content to leave each other alone as long as they themselves were left alone. One day while venturing down the border of the Orc land, he heard a loud argument happening further into the bushes. Moving carefully through the tree branches he came across five orcs having a heated debate, at least it seemed so from the tone of their Orcish words and that four were beating up the fifth. After a few minutes the four orcs left the last unconcious on the ground, and once it seemed safe **Shelter** scuttled down the tree and checked on the beaten Orc. He wasn’t too badly beaten so **Shelter** just tried to bandage up the worst of the gashes. The Orc came to part way through the bandaging and provided **Shelter** a swift punch to the jaw, knocking the small Tabaxi away a couple of feet. The Orc got up and noticed the bandaging, and gave a grunt of an apology. **Shelter** spent the next hour talking with the Orc, Lurtzog, in Common and found out that the older Orc was disliked by the younger males who wanted to show dominance and strength to the tribe. Today was just a warning to Lurtzog for if he didn’t stop advising the tribe leaders against these young ones ideas. **Shelter** periodically visited the old Orc’s home over the next few years listening to what was going on within the tribe, learning the Orcish language, and typically both insulting each other in Orcish so Lurtzog could vent is frustration. **Shelter**’s ventures into the Elvish part of the forest offered their own differences. The Wood Elves were rather indifferent to the Pygmy Tabaxi, but would provide idle conversation should they be asked questions. It seemed to **Shelter** that the elves were too self absorbed to be particularly interesting. The only exception to this behaviour was a young Elvish girl called Nelotie Autumnbloom, she was an outgoing, bubbly, and rather pretty girl as far as elves go. She would talk for hours to **Shelter** about all sorts of topics to do with the elves and the Tabaxi. She was pretty good company over all even if she did try to keep holding his paw, sit really close to him, or always be directly in his face. He simply summed it up to young Elvish behaviour, though he did notice the other elves often looking at the two of them disapprovingly. Over the years of visiting Nelotie he slowly picked up the Elvish language, and became more accepted by the Elves during his visits. Nelotie never did lose that personal bubble-breaking behaviour though...*

*Things quickly changed in **Shelter**’s life when some loud noises started from up on one of the sharp cliff slopes that barred the Pygmy Tabaxi forest from the outside world. **Shelter** and a couple of his cousins, Little Thunder and Violet Buttercup, climbed up the hillside to investigate. Large wagons and dozens upon dozens of weird hairless creatures were beginning construction on a large stone building set partially into the cliff side. **Pounamu Shelter**’s cousins lost interest in a couple of days and stopped coming up the cliff side, but **Shelter** had finally found something new… something strange… He watched these individuals every day for nine months - studying their methods and stealing the odd bits of paper to learn their writing. It wasn’t too hard as it was similar to the bits he had learned from Three Feathers years before, but the content of the text was new and exciting. Upon completion of the building all of the furless people left, except one. One of these beings stayed behind and lived in the large stone structure. Without all of the movement and commotion outside to watch anymore **Shelter** quickly became bored again and began snooping around the stone building. Eventually sneaking his way in, his eyes were met with an amazing sight - rooms filled with all sorts of strange furniture and objects.*

*Over the next 5 months he would sneak in each morning and begin snooping through things and studying them, he quickly became adept at avoiding the lone inhabitant as the stone halls and rooms betrayed their presence, but **Shelter**’s furred feet allowed him to move quietly. Within a few days he found a small library filled with at least a hundred books, and it became here that **Shelter** visited the most frequent, occasionally taking a book home with him to study overnight and bring back the next day. The books spoke of magical energies, and as he read he practiced, he practiced the rituals and enchantments in those books and unlocked a power within himself hey didn’t know he had. Of everything in that building, only one thing did he steal. Many times he sneakily watched the lone individual from hiding holes he found around the place, and noted that when this individual was studying books and manuscripts on magic it did so while smoking from a pipe. **Shelter** assumed this must be the way you were supposed to study the magic arts, so he snooped around until found the individuals collection of pipes and took one for himself to aid him in his studies. As he studied, he read of, and saw illustrations of, items used to enhance spells or power in general. He began noticing some of these items around the rooms and began borrowing them for his study and practice and would return them afterwards as he would the books. The more he studied, the less sure of his opinions about life he became. What is pain or injury if there is the power to heal? What is death if there is the power to resurrect? How do you know if your decisions are really your own if there is the power to manipulate thoughts? All of these questions sat on **Shelter**’s mind and drove him to study longer and harder in hope of finding answers. As the second winter since the construction of the stone building arrived, a mere slight drop in temperature for this region, **Shelter** finally became careless. During some reading in a hiding hole he had found in the library, he saw an illustration of an items that would, when combined with the right enchantment, allow travel to a different place. Amazed at the notion of such a thing existing, AND he had seen this item in the building before, he excitedly raced off to find it, not reading the finer points about the item. He found the item mounted on a wall in the main entrance above a large bookshelf - a black crystal shard about the size of his arm held aloft by purple glowing chains. He could feel some sort of magic enveloping it and he climbed up to it, standing on top of the shelf he reached out his red furred arms to grab it and lift it down. However as his paws touched the surface the shard, with a thunderous crash of energy, burst into a floating black liquid puddle. The chains wrapped around **Shelter's** arms and pulled them into the puddle, the pain was beyond belief as it felt like his arms were burning in some form of fire. Panicking he pushed away from the wall with his feet and managed to pull his now-bloodied arms out and falling off of the shelf onto the stone floor with a clatter. His mind beginning to blur from pain he glimpses a position on a lower shelf with red liquid inside, brief thoughts of his studies flash to him and he he grabs the potion and drinks it quickly. As the liquid went down his throat he could feel the pain leave and his mind clear; he became instantly aware that the puddle was beginning to get larger, eating at the bookshelf and any items nearby - and the lone inhabitant of this place had run up behind him and grabbed him by the scruff of his neck, yelling angrily.*

***Shelter*** *doesn’t remember too much of the next struggle, his only thought was to get out, once getting out of the building he started running down the cliff side - away from the forest, he didn’t want the lone inhabitant to follow him to his family. Magical projectiles impacted the ground around him as he fled, never looking back. He ran nonstop until dusk, eventually collapsing exhausted under the branches of a tree. Looking down at his arms, although healed, the skin and fur was now permanently charred black, a constant reminder of his mistake. As he lay back to rest for the night, he felt something in his pocket - an unusual antiquity consisting of a small gold ring, about the diameter of his palm, with a jet black stone ball suspended in the gap. The ball was unable to be removed despite it not being connected to the ring anywhere. He had never seen it before, didn’t know how it got there, or what it was for. A puzzle for tomorrow he convinced himself as he closed his eyes to rest for his new journey into the strange world beyond the forest of his home.*

## Individuals of Importance

* Tahi Paw - “Paw” is **Shelter**’s father, a hard-working Tabaxi who made daily bamboo deliveries to the Main forest for the tall Tabaxi to then use or take outside of the forest to sell. He never spoke, as his voice box was damaged during a kobold attack years ago and removed his ability to make noise, however Paw was always happy and smiling seeing the best in every situation.

* Sapphire Bit - “Bit” was his eldest sibling whom boredom often plagued also. **Shelter** always looked up to them and wanted to be just like them when he was older. Bit wandered out into the world over 10 years ago when their wanderlust grew too burdensome, **Shelter** hasn’t heard from them since.

* Distant Fire - “Fire” is **Shelter**’s loving mother. A kind hearted Tabaxi with a simple and content outlook on life, she spends most of her days growing bamboo shoots in a nursery.

* Three Feathers - the old storyteller of the clan who had spent most of his life adventuring the wider world. One morning the old Tabaxi was gone, merely a note left behind saying he had to go to the “Great forest in the setting sun.” The Clan held a small ceremony in his memory and he wasn’t talked about again.

## Current Goals

As a typical Tabaxi, **Shelter’s** general obsessions can change at the flick of a tail, however his longer lasting obsessions are:

* Trying to work out what the small antique is that he found in his pocket the day he got burned.

* Discovering the truth about the “Great forest in the setting sun” that was mentioned in Three Feather’s note.