Mmm...would you mind scratching me right behind my ears there?

What? Is something wrong?

Why yes, of course I talked. Are you telling me you've never heard a cat talk before?

Never? Really?

I could be quiet if you'd like, so long as you keep petting me. You stopped, you know.

Ahh, that's better. Would you like me to tell you a story, so long as you're petting me? The smaller ones always like it, even if they do start petting a bit rough at some parts.

Hmmm...how about the story of the starwalker twins I saw once? No, no, I never learned the end to that one...The girl with red eyes and the man with the cigar? No, I never found out why that one happened, and that kind of story is so boring. I know, I'll tell you the one about when I found that one nice girl starwalker.

It was many moons ago, but not too many, and I was just thinking of taking a step up and out when she showed up. It was a nice world I was on, all full of big forests. The birds there were used to watching for bigger cats than I, and I am quiet enough to keep hidden when I wish. I was standing near the top of a great big old tree when she tumbled out of the stars. Nearly landed on my tail. I crouched low and pulled a little shadow around me, but the girl didn't seem to notice me. She was too busy looking around at the trees. I didn't see what was so special-they're just trees.

Anyway, she eventually looked down and made a little "meep" noise like a frightened kitten, so I decided she was safe. I twisted up a little shadow and fluffed up my fur so I looked like one of the local bobcats, and walked up to her. She made another little meeping noise when she saw me, and flinched away. Silly creature almost fell off the branch. I reached out a paw and hooked her shirt in my claw, strengthening myself just a little so I didn't fall, and pulled her up. She stared at me, and I could smell the fear on her. I began to purr, and rubbed up against her. She flinched again, but a little less, and not enough to fall off. I purred louder, and put my head in her lap. The kit was clearly terrified, and I felt sorry for her. Something told me it was her first starwalk, and my first was terrifying. She needed comforting. Eventually she started petting me, and I kept purring.

It got late, and she started yawning. I didn't want her to fall, so I got up. She stood too. I flicked my tail at her and walked to one of my older dens. Her face lit up as she saw it, and she stepped inside. Once I was sure she wouldn't fall, I dropped that world's shadow and took the few steps up and out. Two starwalkers on one world rarely ends well for anyone.

...Yes, I am a starwalker. What kind of idiotic question is that?

Oh, all right. If you must know, my name is Nyota. Now, I believe I shall go to sleep.

All right, fine, I won't sleep on your lap. Some would take that as a compliment, you know.

You know, it's REALLY funny sometimes how coincidental things can be. Within the last, I'd say month, maybe, I was talking with Keeper about making a storyteller planeswalker. I had settled on that planeswalker being a cat. Now, admittedly, it was a male catfolk, and I've never done anything with it or mentioned it to anyone else. I just find it ironic.

I have no problem with you using Daneera in this way. You should know, just for fairness sake, that War of the Wheel is not canon yet (it hasn't been voted in) and is subject to change. That being said, I seriously doubt I would change her ascension story, and even if I for some reason did, it's not a big deal, because you don't name her specifically in this.

As for your story itself, I don't have a whole lot to say about it. It's not bad. I like the first person decision here, and I think it works well with the storyteller persona. I'm a little curious how this cat seems to know all these stories that are real within the canon, though.

The biggest problem I see here is the nature of the cat itself. Usually, cats are not considered sapient and therefore are not about to possess the Spark. Now, there may well be more going on here than that, but in your dossier, we'll want to know this cat's backstory so that we can make an informed judgment on her nature as a planeswalker.

Thanks for writing!

Hehe, yeah, there's not a lot to work with here just yet but what there is is fun. I'm excited to see the dossier.

It'll be interesting if Jade runs into this character...

Not going to lie -- I'm pretty crushed to discover that planeswalking cats find my Jackie stories boring.

I knew I should have included more mice, and sunny spots beneath windows.

OL: She didn't find the story boring. As she said, she doesn't know context. All she knows is that a creepy dark starwalker and a nice woman were at a ball together while Nyota was stealing some minced baloth, and then she smelled explosives, and she ran out. Then the ball exploded, and the woman grabbed the starwalker and leaped out a window. Very exciting and all, but not much to go on.

Raven: Don't worry, I address the whole "is a cat" thing in her dossier, which I'll be doing in a few minutes. And I have two explanations for how she knows things. The serious one, I'll be putting in her dossier. The silly option is that she 'walked to our world, got adopted by a user, and read the NGA wiki. That's a joke. A joke. Please don't hurt me.

Nyota's personality feels to me, but that's just a minor nitpick. This is the best thing I've read all day.

Well, "quiet illusionist knowledge-seeker with one power based on superstition" does not reflect UG to me. And hey, at least she's going over better than Deryk did.

This is really great! My only problem is that Only sentient life can have sparks. The way around that? Awaken, as in the D&D spell, or cats on Nyota's homeplane are just normally sentient.

This character could probably be done in monogreen actually.

Just a thought.

Awaken wouldn't do what you want it to since the spark comes well before you could cast that spell.
green doesn't have a long history of doing glamers, but that doesn't mean it hasn't done it before. Lorwyn particularly comes to mind.

Yeah, that might be the one element that I think would be tricky. But regeneration, storytelling, talking animal... all that stuff could work really well in green. And seeking after stories... I don't know, maybe that could be decentered from Blue a little as per our discussions about the way brains = blue sorta sucks characters into blue and away from g/r. An interest into folklore or history strikes me as VERY green potentially simply because if part of being green is knowing your environment and finding a place within that environment, knowing history is a potential survival strategy. I think you could say that a historian's place is within the dense thicket of time, placing their own temporality within a context.

Wow, sorry, didn't mean to wax poetic there. And I know you can poetically wax any color into doing anything. But nevertheless I think there's something viable here that might be advantageous from the perspective of our wider color troubles.

Okay, maybe she's UG. I wasn't thinking U so much because of the story thing as because of her illusion thing. And didn't anyone complaining about her spark read the double-spoiler in her dossier?

Read it, didn't have time to comment on it. I'm 90% sure your headcanon isn't gonna fly with Barinellos, and I'm not super comfortable with it either. I mean, beyond anything else it just doesn't feel that necessary to me--why add this complication when you could just handwave it with "she's a magical cat, this is a magical place" and not worry about animals having sparks.

The illusion magic does seem pretty blue though tbh I think it's the least interesting aspect of the character.

Okay, fine. I give. The "raising" spell the druid did gave her a soul, instead. I was just trying to add an interesting spin and it didn't work. Oh well, I'll try again next time.

Poetry Wax is some pretty impressive stuff, but have you priced it lately? That stuff's getting crazy. Fortunately, I have a lifetime supply. It's part of a settlement. There was an incident several years ago where I was sold a faulty tin of Poetry Wax, and it utterly failed to stand up under performance conditions. It lead to some seriously injured egos, several fractured sentences, and even a majorly broke rhythm. I was in abstraction traction for weeks. Fortunately, we settled out of court, and I got my lifetime supply, though. I can still feel it on cold nights, though, when the wind is creeping like a...um...damn. I need to go open a new tin. Later.

You know, every now and then, there's a really amazing post on these forums that makes me think "Wow, I wish this forum had a like button." And then I see that this forum actually does have a like button, so I click it.



Edit: Oh yeah, the Planeswalker. I don't think that actually works. While I'm not an expert on the Spark, I don't think you can just "create" a soul that happens to have a Spark. It has to be something you're born with.

The druid did NOT create a soul. The druid *summoned* a soul. On this world, there's a life both before and after death. Souls can have the spark when they're "born", but they never awaken until they become alive. When Nyota was "raised", she just randomly happened to get a soul with the Spark. Lucky, yes, but no more so than any other planeswalker.

That's as close to "created being" as makes aaaabsolutely no difference, in my book. And we don't know any of that about the spark existing in souls prior to being born so... yeah no I don't think that works.

Yeah, basically it doesn't.
The soul is like a token. It only exists on the battlefield. Go to the graveyard, library, exile, hand, or command zone?
Poof, no more token.

I like that analogy and I think we should use that analogy more often.