Tabaxi
Basic Information
Anatomy
Tabaxi are a humanoid race with strong feline features, including a muzzle and whiskers; broad and pointed ears stemming from the tops of their heads; a long, twitching tail; claws instead of fingernails; and fur covering their bodies.
Ecology and Habitats
Tabaxi are compatible with many types of outdoor environments, including hills, mountains, grasslands, tundra, and desert. However, their distaste for water means they rarely travel across or settle in swamps and wetlands. They are sometimes found passing through urban environments, but their mutual distrust of most urban-dwelling races such as humans, gnomes, and dwarves means they rarely stay long.
Dietary Needs and Habits
Tabaxi are instinctive carnivores and predators; though some reject this diet on ethical or spiritual grounds. They prefer fresh meat over prepared when they can get it, with fresh fish being the choicest delicacy of all. In the wild, they can put on short bursts of speed to overtake their prey. One kill is usually sufficient to feed a roaming clan, the typical unit of tabaxi society.
Additional Information
Social Structure
The typical unit of Tabaxi society is the wandering clan, made up of directly related family members. The youngest cub of two parents is expected to include the parents in their clan alongside that cub's mate and offspring, if any. If a tabaxi and their mate have more than one cub, the older cubs split off from the clan upon finding their own mates.
Geographic Origin and Distribution
The vast majority of the world's tabaxi are found in Iyend or Stratos. Their scarcity elsewhere in the world combined with their distaste for sea travel has led historians to postulate that a land bridge once existed between the two continents.
Perception and Sensory Capabilities
They have a cat's keen vision and can see in the dark, though their other senses are roughly on par with a human's.
Civilization and Culture
Naming Traditions
Tabaxi given names are determined by a dizzying array of factors, based on the complex set of superstitions passed down through the ages that they claim originated with Melora. In honor of the goddess of the wild, these names tend to invoke natural phenomena, such as Cloud on the Mountaintop, Five Timber, Left-Handed Hummingbird, or Skirt of Snakes. One factor notably absent from any of these considerations is the sex of the cub.
Clan names have similar provenance, and are often created from scratch as a younger sibling leaves the clan they were born in to form a new one with their mate.
Major Organizations
Tabaxi have no specific kingdom, homeland, or organizing body. There is no tabaxi law save for what the head of a wandering clan decrees, which applies only to that wandering clan, and then only until the clan head forgets or changes their mind.
Beauty Ideals
Tabaxi place high value on cleanliness and scent. Each meal is traditionally followed by a leisurely, thorough bath. Adolescent tabaxi bathe more often than most, fretting constantly over fear of looking ungroomed at the moment they should chance into meeting a potential mate. It is also at this stage of life that they begin bathing themselves rather than allowing a parent to bathe them, so that they might smell only of themselves and not bear the mark of being cared for by having a guardian's scent mixed with theirs.
Beyond these factors, great height is also considered attractive among tabaxi, since it suggests long, powerful legs with which to hunt.
Courtship Ideals
Tabaxi courtship is a whirlwind affair. When two wandering clans happen to cross paths, if both clans contain any unmated members, then the clans make camp a respectful distance apart while the all of the potential mates spend no more than two days evaluating each other. If this evaluation period results in two eligible cubs mutually agreeing to form a new clan, then both clans participate in a ceremony called a Branching, which is described in more detail in Observed Traditions.
During the two days of courtship, the potential mates may not eat of either of their respective clans' hunts. The courtship is considered a trial of the mates to prove that they are capable of becoming self-sufficient. On the other hand, their compatibility is a matter to be judged solely by the potential mates--the heads of the parent clans have no veto power over their cubs' union. This is in acknowledgement that there is no tabaxi law save for a clan's law; the new clan is outside their parent clan's law from the moment they agree to form it.
Relationship Ideals
Tabaxi relationships are generally monogamous. It's not unheard of for a tabaxi to seek out multiple mates, but the parents of a second or third mate may be reluctant to take part such in a Branching ceremony, which puts these relationships outside one of the only formal structures that exist in tabaxi culture. Outside of that, tabaxi freely accomodate any pairing of genders without stigma. There's also no ingrained taboo against a tabaxi forming a clan with a non-tabaxi, although the vast majority of these relationships require one partner to radically adjust their way of life to accomodate the other.
Average Technological Level
Tabaxi have the intelligence and the curiosity to become highly skilled crafters with any material, but their traditional lifestyle precludes access to facilities like a metalworker's forge. They are eager to trade for technological gadgets, however, and it's not uncommon for a tabaxi to spend a year using, breaking down, and putting such a gadget back together, to gain a complete understanding of it before it's tossed aside on the next Novelty Day.
Major Language Groups and Dialects
The tabaxi language has two commonly used forms: spoken and signed, for when tabaxi need to communicate silently with one another while hunting. It also has its own written form, but very few tabaxi still practice it; written Common has mostly replaced written Tabaxi due to their nomadic lifestyle. Signed Tabaxi involves not just hand gestures and facial expressions, but also precise tail movements.
Common Etiquette Rules
Traditionally, tabaxi have no personal property. Anything carried by one member of a wandering clan is considered to belong to the clan, not to the tabaxi. It is considered good manners, should one wandering clan spot another, to change direction to avoid meeting, unless the clan contains one or more eligible cubs.
Common Customs, Traditions and Rituals
Novelty Day: On the first of each year (by whatever means years are reckoned where the tabaxi currently resides), tabaxi observe Novelty Day. Tabaxi make a cultural habit of avidly pursuing one hobby or interest for exactly one year, in order to broaden their horizons. This pursuit can be anything: beekeeping, knitting, astronomy, a new language, etc. On Stagnant Eve, the tabaxi kindles a bonfire at dusk and swears a vow marking the end of that pursuit for the rest of its life. It then tosses in the outfit acquired on the last Novelty Day, as well as any accoutrements related to the previous year's pursuit: books, crafts, materials, holy symbols, etc. The next morning marks the start of Novelty Day, in which each tabaxi acquires a new set of clothing and settles on its new pursuit for the coming year.
Tabaxi who continue to pursue an old interest past Novelty Day are said to be cursed by a stagnant spirit. It is believed that they will meet with ill luck until the spirit has been exorcised and the pursuit abandoned for good.
The Branching: This ceremony celebrates the founding of a new branch between two wandering clans. The new clan provides food for all participants in the ceremony and dries the cleaned hide of this kill over the same fire used to prepare the meal. After this meal, there is dancing and storytelling, followed by the producing of both parent clans' family "hide tree." This hide tree is a record of a wandering clan's geneaology for as many generations as its author can fit on the sheet of rawhide. The head of the new clan sets to work creating its own hide tree on the rawhide sheet prepared alongside the meal. When this work is complete, the parents of both clans bid emotional farewells to their cubs, and the new wandering clan departs to make its way in the world.
Common Taboos
The absence of a common law results in there being very few taboos in tabaxi culture, but disrespect of Melora is one of them. A tabaxi who publicly worships another deity in place of Melora will be shunned by most other tabaxi, and may even face punishment by their wandering clan. Revering other deities alongside Melora does not provoke such a reaction, and for this reason many tabaxi who are drawn to another deity will publicly pay lip service to Melora while privately devoting themselves solely to another.
The other major taboo among tabaxi is to betray or abandon a non-tabaxi. Most tabaxi never have to deal with the temptation to do so by dint of only associating with their own kind. But tabaxi who do form close ties with other peoples take great care never to do anything that might paint them as untrustworthy, for fear of reinforcing the ancient stereotype against their kind.
History
The tabaxi, like several other hybrid species such as the lizardfolk, aarakocra, and kenku, were created by Melora during the Primordial Era. Unlike the other species of the world, who established great civilizations in their homelands, capable of banding together against their various oppressors to bring about the Free Age, the loose and scattered wandering clans of the tabaxi played no significant role in the rebellion. It is for this reason that conventional wisdom among the rest of Alen'dal is that no tabaxi can ever truly be trusted to have one's back in a crisis.
Historical Figures
School of Flying Fish: Regardless of religious belief, an almost universally revered legendary figure among tabaxi is School of Flying Fish, a tabaxi warrior who is said to have performed great deeds during the Liberation War. There are many legends of School of Flying Fish: how he stalked a troop of giants in silence for two weeks, waiting for the right moment to assassinate their leader; how her unearthly reflexes and magical hunting spear allowed her to singlehandedly slay an ancient yellow dragon; how his keen sense of smell caught out a yuan-ti infiltrator in the ranks just in time to foil a sabotage plot; how they raced an enemy messenger pigeon on foot for thirty miles to intercept the plans contained in the bird's pouch. But though the legends disagree on many details, including which theater of war School of Flying Fish served in, all of them begin the same way: "Now this is a true tale only the tabaxi will tell you, for the rest of the world has forgotten."
Moonlight Reflected in Streams: A more ambiguous legend among tabaxi is the apocryphal story of Moonlight Reflected in Streams. Intended as a cautionary tale, the story concerns a tabaxi woman who refused to participate in Stagnant Eve rituals, yet continued to take up new pursuits each Novelty Day. Her brilliance, she claimed, was too great to be contained in any one course of study, and her accomplishments bore this out: her mastery of each craft built upon another until she became known even among the gnomes as a prodigious and prolific inventor. Yet Moonlight Reflected in Streams was also phenomenally unlucky. She was chronically ill, could rarely complete a hunt without her prey spotting her at the last second, and suffered terribly when her mate died only a week after her Branching from a food allergy. Those who knew her begged her to be penitent and throw away her pursuits next Stagnant Eve for her own sake, but she refused to her dying day, claiming that the price she paid for all she learned and did was worth it. A tabaxi telling their cub this story often ends it by looking the cub in the eye and asking "Would you pay so dear a price as that?" To which the rare tabaxi cub may respond, if only in their heart and not out loud, "Yes."
Common Myths and Legends
Melora-Worship: It is generally acknowledged by tabaxi that Melora created the tabaxi as a reaction to the creation of the other peoples of the world. "The dwarves, the elves, the orcs, the halflings--these folk gather as a people in places they have claimed. You will show them another way. You will claim no land and build no society. In return, all the gifts of the natural world will be yours to take: the fish of the rivers, the beasts of the plains, and the birds of the sky. Whatever you can seize belongs to you, and for that you will have legs to chase and claws to catch. It will be no law that guides you, but the wildness in your hearts will be its own virtue." Among the many tabaxi who worship Melora, this is their central creed, and they are fond of quoting parts of it as aphorism.
The Thistle-Crowned Lion: Tabaxi critical of orthodox Melora-worship point out that the creed is ableist and makes no provisions for those unable to hunt, a flaw that is addressed in large societies by the principle of mutual aid. They also cite the disdain for law as a key reason for their untrustworthiness in the eyes of other peoples of the world. A frequent argument for these tabaxi when appealing to their kin is the Parable of the Thistle-Crowned Lion. Once there was a man who lived in observance of Melora, like all good tabaxi, and hunted the steppes of Adeus to keep his mate and three cubs fed. The day came when this tabaxi was pursuing a herd of gazelle, who he had been stalking for several hours. Before he could claim his kill, however, he saw three lionesses run at the herd from three separate directions. The gazelles panicked, seeing no route by which they could escape their attackers, and were swiftly slain. The tabaxi expected a conflict between the three lionesses, who he assumed to be from three separate clans, but was surprised to see them work together to tear hunks of meat from the bodies of the gazelles and drag them together in the same direction. The curious tabaxi used all his guile to stalk the lionesses as they returned to their clan. This clan, the tabaxi was shocked to see, contained three adult males, each of them mated to one of the lionesses, who had been looking after their own cubs until the lionesses returned from the hunt. Moreover, one of the males was lame, and yet it was this male who received the largest portion of gazelle. The tabaxi knew that he had been shown this as a sign from Melora, and took a new name on the spot: the Thistle-Crowned Lion. For the rest of his days, Thistle-Crowned Lion preached the way of the lion: a creature who remains wild but does not shun his own nor ignore their needs.
Interspecies Relations and Assumptions
Tabaxi know of their reputation as untrustworthy among the other species of the world and have learned to expect little in return. As a result, many tabaxi teach their young to avoid other species wherever possible and that they can only truly be safe among their own kind. Ironically, it is largely due to this reluctance to engage with other cultures that the rest of the world's beliefs about them go unchallenged. Those of other species who do take the trouble to get to know tabaxi find that their assumptions about them as untrustworthy or unreliable are unfounded in reality.
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