Tabaxi

Tabaxi are a feline species native to the jungles in the south of the Tecan Confederacy. The species is incredibly low in number and lives as a single tribe.

Tabaxi reach maturity in their late teens, and they live for roughly a century.

## Myths

The tabaxi believe that they are the chosen people of their personification of the wind, who told them that a time will come when they will become the rulers of the world. However, the world will not be given to them on a turquoise platter: instead they must claim it for themselves by right of obsidian and claws. They say that the wind then combined their claws with obsidian, making them sharper, capable of cutting through all the protections of those living around them. However, the wind also poisoned their minds, making them prone to insane fits of violence. Typically, the most insane is chosen as their leader, having clearly been blessed by the wind.

Their tales also tell of a war between a cat and a snake, locked in an endless duel. If the snake was to ever win, then the world as they know it would end. They believe the snake represents the shulassakar rulers of the Tecan Confederacy, and thus their tribe often attempts to wage war of the confederacy, with only the speed and ability of the tabaxi to hide keeping them from extinction. The Tecan people believe the tabaxi to be horrible monsters of great speed and physical power, and as such they consider them great threats. The Jaguar Knights of the confederacy, as part of their initiation, hunt down a tabaxi and skin them, using their skin as their symbol of office. There are rumours though that a number of nights hunt down lesser jaguars for their skins instead, especially if the tabaxi prove too difficult to find or if the one they find manages to overcome them. Aside from the Jaguar Knights, tabaxi pelts are considered great status symbols within the confederacy, and many rulers of its cities own at least one pelt.

The tabaxi people hold the Cave of the Blue Sun sacred, and when a kitten is born, it is taken to the mouth of the cave. The cave is known to produce strange piping sounds, and once the kitten is placed at the cave's entrance, the first sounds the cave produces are used to name it. When a tabaxi dies, they are wrapped in the stripped bark of a tree and ceremoniously dumped into this cave, where their body soon vanishes from, with the now-freed spirit of the tabaxi entering the lower world where it becomes one with the collective souls of the tabaxi people, at least according to the earliest legends.

In the distant past, there was a tabaxi prophet called Khargeet, who led the tabaxi in an attack of the nearby city of Ja'matzalem after claiming to have heard the wind tell him to. The attack was a disaster, and the reprisal from the Tecan people there ultimately resulted in the near total destruction of the tabaxi people, with them being presumed extinct for a couple of centuries afterwards. Since then, any tabaxi called Khargeet, or any variation of that name, has at best been exiled from the tribe, or at worst executed due to the belief that Khargeet will be reincarnated amongst his people and lead them to their ultimate doom. The deaths of the tabaxi that resulted from his actions caused the few survivors to have a cosmological crisis, as they didn't know what would happen to all these tabaxi who died and whose bodies they couldn't recover. To avoid having to come to terms with the concept of all these trapped tabaxi spirits stranded within their bodies on the material plane, rotting on the site of the battle, the tabaxi decided that those who do not enter the lower world linger on the material plane until they can be reborn in the body of a new kitten, after which they can go to the lower world when they die in this second life. During the battle, it was revealed that Khargeet was a truly mad necromancer whose goal was to get his people slaughtered so he could raise them as stronger undead minions who he could use to overthrow the Tecan Confederacy and place himself, ideally as a lich by that point, as the final, immortal tabaxi and turn the world into one of undeath. While it is commonly presumed that he was slain by Tecan forces, he was actually betrayed by some tabaxi warriors who killed him in the middle of the battle. Since then, tabaxi have had a strong taboo against necromancy of any sort.

The tabaxi, due to their long conflict with the Tecan Confederacy, consider serpents to be mystical creatures of power, and as such, whenever a tabaxi slays one, it is customary for them to partake of its flesh, with the belief being that they are taking in its power into their own soul, and in the end to the tabaxi people in the world below.

## Lands

The tabaxi people live within the jungles in the south of the Tecan Confederacy, but they themselves are not part of it, instead wishing to see it fall so they can begin fulfilling their destiny of ruling the world. The tabaxi tribe typically lives in the jungles near the Cave of the Blue Sun, but on occasion have migrated away, turning journeys to the cave into a pilgrimage until they return to the area.

## Culture

Tabaxi culture is one of conflicting ideals. On the one hand, they are proud warriors, yet are also quick to flee from a battle. They take great pride in their appearance, but are fond of hiding in the jungles. They hate the serpentine rulers of the Tecan Confederacy, and yet they consider the serpent to be almost sacred and try to take its power for themselves.

The tabaxi live in the jungle, in homes woven from thin branches and twigs. They often decorate the entrances to these homes with the skulls of those the inhabitants have personally killed in battle, and often paint symbols on them marking the creature the skull belonged to as being spiritually bound to the home's inhabitants, forced to protect them from supernatural threats.

In their society, there is generally no distinction between individuals based on wealth, gender, or fur pattern, with everyone being considered equal baring the priest-chief, who is chosen by the tabaxi when one demonstrates great bouts of insanity.

The god of the tabaxi, generally speaking the only one they worship, is their personification of the wind, who they believe speaks to them on occasion. If the priest-chiefs are to be believed, this deity takes a much more active role in the lives of the tabaxi than the gods of other peoples, which they take as proof of its superiority.

## Evolution

Tabaxi are believed to be close relatives of the leonin people, and the leonin may have evolved from a particular group of tabaxi taken to the southern continent by Reganus. They are similar enough that a lion-like tabaxi is often confused for a leonin by people more familiar with the latter. The tabaxi are generally much more varied, looking similar to panthers, tigers, and jaguars, as well as lions and other felines. The tabaxi are thought to be descendants of the grruuk.