Kajah

	Kajah is an oncera, a jaguar-person. Thus her fur is black-ringed gold, and her muzzle and ears are prominent. She's tall, nearly six feet, with a light quick long-limbed build. A white scar mars her right cheek. She has a nose ring of false gold, alloyed to match her fur.
	She wears sailor-style breeches tight enough to hold her fur, and a sturdy leather jacket tight enough to bind her six modest endowments. Her boots are spoils of war, old but once befitting a captain's fineries, decidedly overdone with her outfit. Her weapon is a cutlass, expensive but common enough at sea, where she isn't anymore.

	Kajah grew up a Mountainheart, in the jungles of the New World. She was hardly a fierce hunter, more of a scout, but she walked the Hunter's Way to adulthood. "Mountainheart" is of course a translation. The native name is "Gatpiou", which is also the term for one member; the plural is "Gatpiaath".
	With her relative isolation as a scout, Kajah was never involved much in politics, and this was both her undoing and her salvation. She was away from the band, seeking this year's sport-born river snake in preparation for the Snake Skirt festival, when Tulasi's rebels struck. Tulasi had long wanted the band to forsake the Mountainhearts and join the wealthy Windspirals, and firmly believed(for reasons he refused to discuss) that the Windspirals would be glad to have them. When the neighboring band of Nightdrinkers missed a weekly market day, Tulasi thought the resulting missed order of iron tools was his opportunity to take over the band from the chieftain in a quick coup. He thought wrong. Kajah returned to the camp to find it a warzone, split between loyalists and rebels. Her own family was divided, her parents loyalists, her elder brother and sister rebels; her baby brother had been a pawn in their microcosm of the power play, but for now he was with their parents at the loyalists's temporary camp. Rather than retire to either faction's temporary camp, and thereby declare her allegiance, Kajah slept under the stars, near the waterfall, in a rocky clearing she and her friends had found as children.
	She awoke when she was visited by Neresah. Kajah'd had a crush on her when they were younger, but they'd remained friends, and now Neresah was married to Odenji. Neresah was here not to take refuge of her own, but to find Kajah, and recruit her to the rebel cause. She was nearly swayed, but her friend laid it on a little too thick, a little closer than Odenji would've accepted. Kajah fled into the jungle, and Neresah didn't follow. Kajah found a twisted old tree, devoid of leaves but thick with little branches, to sleep up in the arms of.
	She awoke when she was visited by the Skyweaver, who she didn't recognize. The old spider covered a lot of area, but with slender limbs. It promised her a solution to her problem if she hunted for it, brought a large kill to its cave. Kajah didn't want victory for either side, but the Skyweaver reassured her, the solution was not victory for either side, it was taking the decision off her hands. Unlike with Neresah's visit, Kajah awoke /after/ the Skyweaver's visit.
	She did as the old spider had asked, killing a capybara and bringing it to the indicated place in the dead of night. There was a cave there, just as the Skyweaver had said. And in the dark inside the cave, where she left the capybara, there was a web. Not exactly a web, but a cloak of lacy silk strands beaded with little stars, glittering in the dark. She returned to her tree, and slept until dawn.
	Kajah donned the webbing and returned to camp, the real camp, where noone dared sleep. She strode with a deadly confidence she didn't feel. She arrived just as another party was arriving, a few Nightdrinkers and a few hairless sailors. The sailors were from across the sea, had stopped in to resupply, and the Nightdrinkers had brought them here to buy supplies from the Mountainhearts that normally would have to wait a week for a market day. One of the sailors recognized Kajah's cloak as a sign of the Skyweaver, a sign that the existing power structure should be supported; the Nightdrinkers were appalled by the rebels. And so both took up arms for the loyalists. Kajah was thus drawn in on the loyalists's side, and she fought with ferocity and stealth. By sunset the loyalists were victorious. Tulasi was killed in the fray.
	Also by sunset, Atravi arrived with word from the Chief. Atravi was Tulasi's most incompetent lieutenant, and he'd sent him on behalf of the Chieftain, with the band's symbolic Mountainheart mantle, to withdraw the band from the Mountainheart tribe. Atravi had failed at the rituals of withdrawal, but in the process had gotten them kicked out of the tribe. Whatever deal Tulasi had with the Windspirals, none of the other rebels knew. The band was bereft, and the Nightdrinkers offered to take them in.
	Kajah had no dislike of the Nightdrinkers, they were pleasant enough neighbors, but she felt no loyalty as one of them. It was then that she realized what the old spider had been doing. If she'd been loyal, if she'd kept to her outrider idiom but hunted rebels in the jungle, then she could've waylaid Atravi and returned the mantle, with the Chief none the wiser. If she'd thrown her lot in with the rebels, fought loyally for her elder siblings and Neresah, then she'd be a Windspiral by now, with the associated creature comforts to come. It was her lack of loyalty that left her bereft, a Nightdrinker or nothing.
	Well, not nothing. The sailor who was devoted to the Skyweaver was eager to welcome her, to smooth her way among the sailors. Firearms were rising, but any warship still had an endless hunger for a strong arm with a macuahuitl, and later with a cutlass. Kajah took to the sea with gusto, with loyalty to her Captain and to the secret faith of the Skyweaver.
	In time, technology shifted, and the economy with it. Her ship was taken in for upgrades, and in its new life it wouldn't get its punch by being thick with sailors. The crew was disbanded save the officers, and new opportunities were scarce as similar happened elsewhere in the fleet. Kajah's meager money ran out — she hadn't been saving to retire, but merely to blow it on wine and women at her next shore leave — and she found herself nigh penniless on the streets.
	But a heretic cult of the Mother Of Looms still has a hunger for loyal souls willing to keep a secret, and you meet the strangest people at church…

	Company Point: Territory

	Duty: Stand For Something
	Craving: Earn The Love Of A Woman

#char Kajah
85
-7	Not Using Language MD
9	Oncera
1	Thick Headed
1	Wealth: 1
1	Jaguar's Path 1: Pounce
5		Body: 2
4	Endurance: 4d
4	Vigor: 4d
5		Charm: 2
5		Command: 2
4	Intimidate: 4d
20		Coordination: 5
1	Dodge: 1d
3	Stealth: 3d
3	Weapon Skill: Swords: 1d+ED
3	Weapon Skill: Unarmed Strike: 1d+ED
5		Knowledge: 2
2	Student Of Sailing: 2d
10		Sense: 3
3	Eerie: 3d
2	Empathy: 2d
1	Hearing: 1d

#char Oncera
9
3	Night Vision
0	Carnivore (Cannibal Smile, but can only eat meat)
4	Rabbity
1	Soldier's Slumber
1	Houndscent