Overview
The Feline-Grace Cat Man is the quick, proud eye of The Whisker Warrens, a lean, umber feline kin of the sun-warmth warrens who moves with the feline grace and keeps the open warrens, the tribes' quick, proud, and most certain eye. It stands nearly two meters tall, watchful and fast, with the kind of certainty that comes from a life measured in kept graces rather than years. Where the Shadow-Word cat men speak the shadow, the Feline-Grace cat men of the warrens keep the grace, and they have been keeping the first grace in the first open warren for a very long time.
Habitat
The Feline-Grace Cat Man keeps to the open warrens of The Whisker Warrens, a range of sun-warmed stone ground where the shadows run deep and the sun-warmth is a treaty. Its dwellings are dug into the faces of the open warren walls, hollows of laid flagstone and coaxed shadow that catch the sun-warmth on their inner face and the shelter of the warren on their outer. It favors the older open warrens where the grace runs longest and the keeping is oldest, the places where a grace can be kept without the warren's own motion breaking it.
Appearance
A Feline-Grace Cat Man stands about 1.71 m tall, lean and fast, with short umber, sparse fur that reads as bright in the sun-warmth. Its left claw bears the claw-notch, a deliberate mark worn as a record of the long art of the grace, and its pupils are slit and pale gold, bright and certain beneath the brow, the color of the sun-warmth's own glow at dusk. Its coat is worn short and neat so it does not catch the open ground, and it wears a patchwork of leather in muted umber and deep slate and carries a single grace-stone at its belt, set with a single open-loop at the brow, the loop of a keeper.
Behaviour
The Feline-Grace Cat Man is quick, proud, and profoundly certain, a creature of long graces and long attention who rarely surprises and rarely is surprised. It observes before it keeps, often for hours, watching an open warren or a person or a bargain until it understands the shape of the grace, and only then does it keep, and then with a certainty that feels rehearsed over years. It is not unkind, but it is not easily moved, and a debt named by a Feline-Grace cat man is a debt the warren will keep long after the keeper has gone.
Natural Weapons & Defenses
The Feline-Grace cat man is no open-ground fighter in the way of a blade, for its power is the grace and the open ground itself, not force. Its primary defense is the open warren, for it knows every corner of the open warrens and can lead a pursuer through The Whisker Warrens for days until the pursuit loses its nerve and its balance. Should it be forced to act, a Feline-Grace cat man is fast and precise, 10 m/s over the open ground and low, and it fights to unmake a threat rather than to wound it, cutting a root, dimming a light, or keeping a grace until the threat is spent.
Magic Alignment
The Feline-Grace cat man is attuned to the long word of the grace, for the grace is the keeping and the keeping is the whole of its power, and a cat man that has an open warren and a word and a grace does not need a spell that is not its own. It is not attuned to any art that is not the grace, and it is not bound by any word that is not its own, and the not being bound is the whole of its way of being free. Its one signature thing is the keeping, which is not a magic but is a thing that the cat men of the warrens have kept for a very long time, and the keeping is the grace, and the grace is the whole of its power.
Society
The Feline-Grace Cat Men live in The Whisker Warrens in loose tribes around the open warrens, bound by the graces they keep together rather than by blood or by place. There is no elder and no ruler, for a cat man that has kept the most and walked the most is simply the one the others listen to, and the listening is a keeping and the keeping is the whole of their society. Decisions are made in the open warren, by a company of gold-eyed keepers that has already decided and is only agreeing, and once made they are kept, for a cat man that breaks a keeping is a cat man that has broken the whole of what it is.
Culture & Lore
The culture of the Feline-Grace Cat Man is a culture of the kept grace, a whole way of life organized around the idea that a word that is quick and proud is the only honest word in the warrens. They keep no records, for a cat man that has kept a grace does not need a record, the keeping is the record, and the keeping is quick and proud and does not fade. Their stories are slow and quick, told in the open warren at the dusk, and they are stories of graces kept and warrens walked and the quick, proud difference between them, told in a voice that is barked and means every keeping.
Home
The Whisker Warrens is the Feline-Grace cat man's home and its keeping, a range of sun-warmed stone ground where the shadows run deep and the sun-warmth is a treaty, where the cat men keep their graces and their quick, proud words. It is a strange and proud place, one that stands as if it were a very old animal holding its breath, and the Feline-Grace cat man has learned to live inside that open ground rather than against it. The warm sun-warmth that runs up through the open warrens is the warrens' own, a soft gold glow that the cat men have come to read as the color of a kept grace.
Relations
The Feline-Grace Cat Man keeps a long, careful truce with the other creatures of The Whisker Warrens, a truce of kept graces that has held for a long time and is the oldest and most fragile thing in the warrens. To the warm sun-warmth of the open warrens the Feline-Grace cat man is a quick, proud, and absolutely certain presence, a gold-eyed keeper that is at home in the open warrens and in the grace, and the warmth has learned to glow wide and let the keepings pass, for a cat man that has kept you has decided you are a keeping and not a lesson.
In the Story
In the story of the warrens, the Feline-Grace Cat Man is the quick, proud edge of the tale, the place where the graces are kept and an open warren is walked and a grace is read. It is the figure that keeps a new grace in the dusk and holds the open ground very quick and very certain, and the figure that, when the truce with the shadow-word cat men grows thin, is the one that remembers what the truce cost and keeps the old grace quick and proud and absolutely certain.