The Wonders of Arlia

Catman

Quick facts

Real name: Puss Wayne · Race: Tabaxi · Role: Investigative reporter, vigilante, mayoral candidate · Home: Saline Coast · Status: Alive, sealed in a detention orb on a timer (as of C2 Session 83)

The Catman is a masked vigilante of the Saline Coast. Under the mask he is Puss Wayne, an investigative reporter who later ran for mayor. He pulled The FAM into the city’s conspiracies in their first week, saved their lives more than once, and was framed by the Velvet Truffle Company for the murder of Thalorian Valedriss.

Overview

The Catman works the city’s shadows in a black cowl and dark suit, with a hideout the party called the Cat cave. In his first appearance he had a partner, Basil, his “great mouse detective.” He keeps a strict no-killing rule and seeks retribution instead of revenge.

His parents were gunned down on the Saline Coast, seemingly at random, during a night out with their son. Puss Wayne tracked down the gunman and got his answers and his revenge, but it didn’t bring his parents back or make him a better man. That is why he won’t kill.

History

The festival conspiracy (Sessions 3–30)

In Session 3, after a mysterious figure broke into Wilbur’s shop, the Catman turned up and at first suspected Wilbur. He then told the group that the sea creature victim, Isabella Thorne, was an investigative journalist. He took them to the morgue, where Kip found she had been stabbed. The party got out of trouble with the guards in Session 4 by claiming to be working with “the legendary Catman,” and in Session 7 he saved them from animated weapons at Garrick’s armory when they were close to a total wipe.

In Session 21 he appeared at a window demanding entry as guards closed in on Nelda’s family home. He revealed he was a reporter and gave Nelda a recording of her admitting to the prison break, which Captain Eric Stormshield had been holding as leverage. The party spent the night in the Cat cave and worked under his wary guidance, tracing the signal that controlled the animated objects to somewhere underwater off the coast. In Session 25, The Whisper proved his knowledge by naming the Catman as Puss Wayne. When the party needed a huge diamond to save Wilbur in Session 30, Catman got one from a VTC ship’s cargo.

The campaign for mayor (Sessions 44–57)

When the party returned in Session 44, Puss Wayne was running for mayor against Thalorian Valedriss, whom he called a puppet of the VTC. He told the party the gold dragon was Khalor the Dreamreaper, in partnership with the VTC and using its technology to hatch his children, and that the eggs might be at VTC headquarters on Choco Island.

In Session 46 he crashed through the ceiling of the crypt below the morgue to help fight the undead Tobias Blackwood, and grabbed a piece of parchment the fleeing necromancer dropped. It was a wanted poster for the Catman, which Kip said was “very generous” compared to his actual appearance.

By Session 57 he was trailing in the polls, which he blamed on VTC influence and public apathy, and the party agreed to help his campaign.

Capture

On the night Thalorian died, the Catman was on a rooftop at the Valedriss estate, listening to Thalorian argue with Lazra Vant. As the door opened he knocked a vase off a shelf. The gnoll agent Daask Bruiser caught his scent, and when the Catman tried to grapple him, Daask trapped him in a shrinking detention orb. From inside it, he watched Thalorian lunge at Lazra and die. Daask told him, “You’re not prey because you lost. You lost because you’re prey,” and pocketed the orb (Session 81).

The VTC arrested him at the scene and charged him with the killing (Session 62). Mia Vex warned Nelda that he was set to be executed within a week or two (Session 71). In his cell, he stayed certain that someone would come for him one day (Session 80).

Interrogation and the gallows (Sessions 81–83)

Strapped to a table in an interrogation room at the Outer Wharf, he dodged Thaddeus Toffington’s questions with jokes until Toffington brought up his parents, and then he told the story of their murder. Toffington accused him of setting fire to company vessels in the harbor and stealing something valuable from company stores, and told him his right to a public trial had been suspended. When asked about his allies, the Catman warned that the Fellowship was resourceful, cunning, and crazy as hell.

He was dragged in magical shackles that cut him off from the Weave into a hangar, where Khalor shapeshifted into a perfect mirror image of him. The Catman told the dragon he hoped they killed him and that he would enjoy being him, because it was one hell of a ride. Then he was gagged and hooded.

At the gallows, Khalor stood in for him while the real Catman stood hooded beside him. Escher noticed a tabaxi tail poking out from behind one prisoner and pulled off the hood. Lying prone and restrained, the Catman told the party to leave him to die. Instead he threw something carrying his scent into a corner, which Daask swallowed whole, then dropped his invisibility and cast Mirror Image so three Catmen surrounded the executioner. In the end Daask slammed a second detention orb into him and trapped him again. Masha pried the orb out of Daask’s grip.

Wilbur found that the orb runs on a timer. The Catman should be released on his own soon, and forcing it open would be dangerous.

The charges

At the gallows the VTC read the charges against him: the murder of Thalorian Valedriss, vigilantism, assault on officers of the peace, trespass on no fewer than 41 occasions, unlicensed investigative journalism, obstruction of commerce, impersonation of a public servant, and jaywalking.

Relationships

Notable quotes

  • His warning to Toffington that the Fellowship was “resourceful, cunning, and crazy as hell.”

Appears in

Session 3, Session 4, Session 7, Session 21, Session 22, Session 25, Session 30, Session 44, Session 46, Session 57, Session 62, Session 71, Session 80, Session 81, Session 82, Session 83

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