Story
The Blue Marlin had anchored in a quiet harbor town, the kind where the loudest sound after sunset was the creak of mooring ropes. Most of the crew slept. A few dice games murmured on deck. The night felt still.
Then the smell hit the ship: coppery, fresh, sharp enough to make sailors look up from their mugs.
A shadow hopped lightly over the railing. Bare feet, slick with drying blood, touched the deck. A moment later Ileena emerged into the lantern glow, her skin painted in stripes of midnight blue and charcoal black. Her tail twitched with lazy satisfaction. She held a burlap sack in one hand. It dripped.
Caelin, who had been inspecting ropes, froze. “Tell me that is fish.”
Ileena blinked at her, then peered into the bag. “No fish.” She reached inside and withdrew a human heart, still warm. She bit into it with neat, dainty teeth. “Soft. This one died afraid. Fear drained it. I will gain little.”
Several sailors gagged. One ran to the railing and emptied his stomach.
“You were supposed to stay on the ship,” Caelin hissed.
“I was bored,” Ileena replied cheerfully. She plopped the half-eaten heart back into the sack with a wet thump. “The men in the camp were not using their lives anymore.”
Scarnax appeared, jaw tight, but not surprised. “What camp.”
“Bad men,” Ileena said, licking her fingers clean. “Four tents. Twelve men. Smelled of slaves and old blood. They watched the harbor. I watched them back.” She shrugged, letting the cloak she’d abandoned earlier slide from one shoulder. “They were planning to raid the ship. I did not like that.”
Nasheem pinched the bridge of his nose. “You killed twelve armed men alone.”
“Yes,” she said, confused by the question. “They were loud.”
Pelonias, who had seen stranger things in silence, gestured to the dripping sack. “What are those for.”
Ileena tilted her head. “Gifts.”
Silence.
“For you,” she added, as if that clarified everything. “Proof the camp will not trouble us.”
Junia scrambled onto the deck, wide-eyed. “Are you hurt?”
Ileena blinked again, genuinely touched. “No. It's their blood.”
Junia exhaled in relief.
A breeze rolled over the deck. Ileena stretched like a cat waking from a nap, muscles rippling under painted skin. “I will bathe now. The blood dries itchy.” She padded toward the rail, pausing only to nuzzle her cheek against Scarnax’s shoulder in an affectionate, utterly inappropriate gesture that left the captain stiff as a carved post.
Her tail brushed Pelonias’s leg as she passed. He didn’t breathe again for several seconds.
She dropped her loincloth on the deck and slipped over the side with a barely audible splash and vanished into the dark water.
Behind her, the deck remained very, very quiet.
Pelonias finally spoke, voice carefully neutral, “We should... dispose of those.”
Caelin shrugged weakly. “Aye. Before someone asks questions.”
No one moved for a moment.
Then Mbaru sighed, muttered something about “tiny woman, giant mess,” and picked up the dripping sack with two fingers, carrying it away like an offended god.
The crew exchanged glances.
Having Ileena aboard meant danger. Chaos. Strange gifts.
But also one comforting truth:
If something stalked the Blue Marlin in the night... She would stalk it first.

Background

Ileena was born in the shadowed floodplains at the edge of Montosho, where Catlings moved through the branches like ghosts and no one could remember a time when their people had lived anywhere else. She grew up in a wanderer band that shifted from reed nests to treetop shelters to riverbanks without warning. Bonds were personal, never communal. If a quarrel soured a mood, a Catling simply slipped into the trees and joined another group. Ileena understood this fluidity as natural as breathing.

Her childhood was a blur of wet leaves and quick feet. She learned to climb before she spoke clearly, learned to hunt before she understood fear. Her mother painted her body for hunts with the stripes of the tiger spirit, telling her that courage was not a feeling but a movement of the soul. Her father taught her to kill silently, not out of cruelty but respect, because a clean kill was a clean prayer.

Ileena’s talent showed early. She moved without sound, even in knee deep water. She tracked prey for hours without blinking. And she learned the body paint rituals with ease. Black panther for silence, orange streaks for rage, black speckles for cold patience. Each paint changed her posture and her mind, and the spirits always seemed close at her shoulders.

Life in Montosho

Like many Catlings, Ileena drifted from group to group. She hunted with cousins one season and strangers the next. She spent a year alone deep in the banyan where the air tasted of rot and forgotten rain, surviving on roots and birds and whatever she could kill quickly enough.

She first learned to fear humans during a border raid. Imperial hunters captured two Catlings she knew, binding them in iron and hauling them toward Fort Jandrel. Ileena followed for two days, too young to strike, too clever to be caught. At night she painted herself in panther black and cut the throats of the guards in silence, freeing the captives. The experience shaped her. Humans were dangerous. They were also slow.

Meeting the Waverider

Years later, she guided a group of foreigners upriver through the Montosho wilds. They came seeking a lost druid, a man tangled in roots and madness. Ileena led them with the patience of a panther. She watched the trees for danger and watched the foreigners for foolishness. She saved them from snakes, from fever, from Boons, and from the forest itself.

She also watched their ship, the Waverider. A strange vessel, full of strange people. And unlike the Empire stations, unlike the hunters who killed for sport, unlike the slavers who stole Catling children, the Waverider did not treat her as prey. They treated her as companion, equal, guide. When she returned to her own people after the expedition ended she found her thoughts circling the Waverider again and again. She dreamed of its wooden decks and the smell of open water. For a Catling, fascination was a kind of hunger.

It never left her.

Leaving Montosho

A season passed, then another. Her band drifted. The jungle whispered. Yet Ileena felt restless. She had tasted a world beyond roots and vines. She wanted to see mountains. She wanted to smell cold air. She wanted to learn what the sea tasted like beyond the thin slice she had already known.

When a ship flying similar anchored in the river she watched it.

The ship was not the Waverider. It was the Blue Marlin.

Ileena watched the crew for an evening. She studied their rhythm, their speech, the scent of their work. They were not slavers. They were not hunters. They were explorers. They had space for one more shadow.

She approached Scarnax at dawn, still stained in black paint from a night hunt, carrying a fresh heart in one hand as an offering of respect. The crew stared. Scarnax did not flinch. She liked him immediately.

Life Aboard the Blue Marlin

Ileena adjusted to ship life easily, though she hated shoes and refused to sleep in a hammock. She curled up wherever felt warmest, often in the rigging or on top of barrels. She spoke often, teased often, and touched freely, curling up beside crew members without warning, much to their discomfort. She wore little, usually only a loincloth and some beads, and saw no reason to change for anyone.

As a scout she excelled. She could slip onto shore without a sound, paint her body according to the spirit she needed, and return with precise reports or, more often, with a sack of fresh hearts and the simple announcement that a threat had been dealt with.

The crew learned quickly to avoid startling her during early morning stretches. Catling flexibility was impressive but occasionally alarming.

Masks and Shadows

When the Blue Marlin makes landfall, Ileena must hide what she is. Most ports see Catlings as beasts, slaves, curiosities to be caged or exotics in a harem. A bare glimpse of her ears or tail could draw slavers, guards, or the kind of attention that ends with iron shackles.

For that reason, she travels under a deep hooded cloak and only with a bodyguard at her side, usually Mbaru or Skarnulf. She hates every moment of it. The cloth itches, the crowds reek of fear and metal, and she must walk upright and cautious instead of flowing through shadows the way her body prefers.

This does not stop her from slipping away when the mood takes her. Cloak or no cloak, a Catling knows how to vanish. She often climbs rooftops, prowls alleys, or darts across market stalls, returning hours later with information the crew did not know they needed.

Secrecy frustrates her, but she keeps the cloak for one reason: the crew asked her to, and she trusts the crew.

Personality and Temperament

Ileena is warm and playful. She thrives on small talk and closeness. She climbs people like trees and speaks while sitting too close, entirely unaware of human concepts of modesty. Her affection is feline. Her loyalty is instinctive. Her violence is terrifying when it arrives.

She is smart, not in the studious way, but in the way predators must be smart. She reads posture, eyes, scent, tension. She understands lies before they are spoken. She has no patience for politics and no interest in rules. She follows instincts, not hierarchies.

Despite her savagery, she is not cruel. Her kills are swift. She does not torture, not even her enemies. A hunt is a prayer, not a game.

Relationship With the Crew

She adores Yasmira’s cooking and often tries to steal scraps before meals. She respects Shaedra’s seriousness but pokes at it with casual affection. She plays verbal games with Ayesha, even though half the time she does not fully grasp the political nuance. She naps near Pelonias because he smells like calm. She climbs Caelin’s rigging like a jungle gym and ignores the shouting. She tests Skarnulf the way predators test one another, with prowling proximity and occasional punches. She likes Mbaru because he does not treat her like a curiosity. She enjoys teasing Nasheem because he blushes when she sits on his lap.

She likes Silvio, but thinks he dislikes her, as he seems to avoid her. The truth is that he feels intimidated by her, interpreting her carefree nature as power, her touching as intrusion.

Scarnax she respects. Deeply. Instinctively.

Roleplaying Notes

Speak lightly, with amusement. Sit close. Touch freely. Move constantly. Change moods like a shifting shadow. Kill quickly. Trust rarely. Love fiercely. Treat every new place like a hunt waiting to happen.

_{Previous Index Next}