Kuraks

Kuraks is a tabaxi of the Geroni city of Avlor Aten in the campaign Yeni Dünya ("New World"), the head of the Eyes of Aten, the city's detectives. He has black fur and braids gathered with silver, and on his shoulder he wore their badge, an eye within a clawed paw. The head consul said that the city had always given this work to tabaxi, a custom no other city shares.^{1 2 3}

The arrest

When the band came out of the street mural into the city, the chief arcanist spoke privately with a tabaxi who then gave the band orders; he rode to the building of civil officials on a bird-like mount, and there they learned his name. When the band explained in the Geroni tongue that the silver book they carried showed names, Kuraks took the Book of Names and went out with it.^{4 5 6 7}

The fight in the forest

Long afterwards, as the band fought a mage with magical hounds and guard-machines on a forest path, a black-clad tabaxi they knew sprang from the trees, stepped on a fallen hound and leapt at the mage with an S-shaped tribal dagger; the mage's gesture blunted the blow, but it still reached near the collarbone. Lightning from a hound's shattered eye-stone struck him, a sword and a second, inner blow wounded him, a sign that he could use some magic, and he was left too hurt to take another hit. Still he waited with his dagger ready, struck down the last hound when it came close and dodged the blast as it burst, and Bruno healed him with a touch.^{8 9 10 11 12 13 14}

As he came towards the band after the fight, a sharp cramp seized him and spread into his right arm; three of the others felt a milder, similar pain in their backs, near the heart. Fauna felt nothing.¹⁵

Fugitive

He now wore black leather armour and knife sheaths instead of his traditional dress, and spoke the band's language with a strange accent; he said he had learned it quickly, having lived part of his life among the Inran. Once an officer of the state, he was now a fugitive and an enemy of the people in his own city's eyes. Asked whether all his people were dead, he said most had been killed, but not all; a few were hiding in the cities.^{16 17 18 19}

He had not come by chance. The head consul Orpi, their common friend, had sent him word more than once that the band were alive and still in the affair, and he had searched the forest for them for a week without magic, guessing they would keep off the main road and noticing the sound and feel of their teleport. He worked better alone, he said; he would work towards the same end in the city, and wished to know where the head consul was. Travis later told the band that the tabaxi had come to the city, wanted to see the consul and was ready to share what he knew.^{20 21 22 23 24}

Spoiler: Kuraks's accountGösterAçık ettiği: Yeni Dünya #26 · Ne okuduğunuzu söyleyin

Kuraks said that after the slaughter of the first night he and the survivors, who had been assassins before they were detectives, tried to kill Deimos: of five, they found three and brought down only one. The one he attacked stood in the middle of a ritual he did not understand, with shadow creatures appearing; thinking he could slip past one was a great mistake. He described a black, unsettling, round crystal, partly cut and partly raw, with several mages gathered around it. Wounded, he leapt through a window into the river and was carried away.^{25 26 27 19}

With Sticks

His new clothes drew the eye like an assassin's, so Sticks gave him his old cloak to cover them. To outsiders the two black tabaxi looked much alike, but they told each other apart by eyes and whiskers; Kuraks, born on this continent, stood and moved more like a cat, while Sticks, from the Empire, carried himself more like a man. Sticks's boasting of his fame in the city and jokes about black cats and bad luck turned to friendly teasing, and they spoke of offering each other work one day.^{28 29 30 31}