Overview
The Shadow-Word Cat Man is the solitary, proud voice of The Whisker Warrens, a lean, slate-grey feline kin of the sun-warmth warrens who speaks the shadow word and moves through the dark as if it were a door left open. It stands nearly two meters tall, watchful and fast, with the kind of certainty that comes from a life measured in kept shadows rather than years. Where the fox men of the hollow read the face, the Shadow-Word cat men of the warrens speak the shadow, and they have been speaking the first shadow in the first warren for a very long time.
Habitat
The Shadow-Word Cat Man keeps to the warm 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 warm stone, 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 warrens where the shadows run deepest and the speaking is oldest, the places where a shadow can be kept without the warren's own motion breaking it.
Appearance
A Shadow-Word Cat Man stands about 1.74 m tall, lean and fast, with short slate-grey, 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 shadow, 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 shadow, and it wears a patchwork of leather in muted grey and deep slate and carries a single shadow-stone at its belt, set with a single dark-loop at the brow, the loop of a speaker.
Behaviour
The Shadow-Word Cat Man is solitary, proud, and profoundly certain, a creature of long shadows and long attention who rarely surprises and rarely is surprised. It observes before it speaks, often for hours, watching a warren or a person or a bargain until it understands the shape of the shadow, and only then does it speak, 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 Shadow-Word cat man is a debt the warren will keep long after the speaker has gone.
Natural Weapons & Defenses
The Shadow-Word cat man is no open-ground fighter and carries no blade, for its power is the shadow and the warm stone itself, not force. Its primary defense is the warren, for it knows every corner of the warm 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 Shadow-Word cat man is fast and precise, 9 m/s over the warm stone and low, and it fights to unmake a threat rather than to wound it, cutting a root, dimming a light, or speaking a shadow until the threat is spent.
Magic Alignment
The Shadow-Word cat man is attuned to the long word of the shadow, for the shadow is the speaking and the speaking is the whole of its power, and a cat man that has a dark and a word and a warren does not need a spell that is not its own. It is not attuned to any art that is not the shadow, 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 speaking, which is not a magic but is a thing that the cat men of the warrens have spoken for a very long time, and the speaking is the shadow, and the shadow is the whole of its power.
Society
The Shadow-Word Cat Men live in The Whisker Warrens in loose tribes around the sun-warmth, bound by the shadows 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 closed the most is simply the one the others listen to, and the listening is a speaking and the speaking is the whole of their society. Decisions are made in the warm warren, by a company of gold-eyed speakers that has already decided and is only agreeing, and once made they are kept, for a cat man that breaks a speaking is a cat man that has broken the whole of what it is.
Culture & Lore
The culture of the Shadow-Word Cat Man is a culture of the kept shadow, a whole way of life organized around the idea that a word that is solitary and proud is the only honest word in the warrens. They keep no records, for a cat man that has kept a shadow does not need a record, the speaking is the record, and the speaking is solitary and proud and does not fade. Their stories are slow and solitary, told in the warm warren at the dusk, and they are stories of shadows kept and doors closed and the solitary, proud difference between them, told in a voice that is barked and means every speaking.
Home
The Whisker Warrens is the Shadow-Word cat man's home and its speaking, a range of sun-warmed stone ground where the shadows run deep and the sun-warmth is a treaty, where the cat men speak their shadows and their solitary, 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 Shadow-Word cat man has learned to live inside that warm stone rather than against it. The warm sun-warmth that runs up through the warrens is the warrens' own, a soft gold glow that the cat men have come to read as the color of a kept shadow.
Relations
The Shadow-Word Cat Man keeps a long, careful truce with the other creatures of The Whisker Warrens, a truce of kept shadows 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 warm warrens the Shadow-Word cat man is a solitary, proud, and absolutely certain presence, a gold-eyed speaker that is at home in the warrens and in the shadow, and the warmth has learned to glow wide and let the speakings pass, for a cat man that has spoken you has decided you are a keeping and not a lesson.
In the Story
In the story of the warrens, the Shadow-Word Cat Man is the solitary, proud edge of the tale, the place where the shadows are kept and a door is closed and a shadow is read. It is the figure that speaks a new shadow in the dusk and holds the warm stone very solitary and very certain, and the figure that, when the truce with the feline-grace cat men grows thin, is the one that remembers what the truce cost and keeps the old shadow solitary and proud and absolutely certain.