Earliest existence: 1,529 AR
Jandar Tornalis didn’t just feel destiny’s call he grasped for it. The brilliant Elven sorcerer saw the other races of Ka’Uvala as nothing more than undisciplined noise, a chaotic mess only he possessed the clarity to silence. To forge his vision of true order Jandar abandoned the cool whisper of Felu’melor and drove himself deep into the sun-scorched throat of the Silhol Valley in 1,529 AR. He needed solitude a source of raw magic, a crucible for his grand design. Weeks of relentless heat nearly broke him but he found it, a network of jagged caves carved into a rock formation a natural haven against the sun’s savage glare. Here in the shadow of the peaks his army would begin.
The first days were a slow painstaking ritual. Jandar molded clay and desert earth shaping figures into his imagined vision a powerful bipedal feline form. He didn’t just channel energy he poured his very essence into them. The inert earth would shimmer then harden into stone and finally soften into living flesh and blood. The first a lithe female he named NAME1 was a marvel. Her eyes held a primal curiosity yet they were utterly vacant of independent thought. NAME1 and all those that followed were instantly bound to Jandar’s mind by an invisible tether, a magical thread that demanded absolute obedience. As the silent figures he called Tabaxi multiplied, their collective labor accelerated the work. They toiled without complaint digging, sculpting and gathering materials under the cold constant watch of his telepathic gaze.
When the army of dutiful Tabaxi swelled into the hundreds, Jandar’s arrogance began to fracture. He had made a catastrophic miscalculation. The magical energy necessary to maintain his psychic grip on every single mind was far more enormous than he imagined, a constant drain on his very life essence. The heady thrill of creation withered, replaced by a deep gnawing weariness that hollowed him out. He searched for a solution a way to reinforce the link but found only exhaustion. The great sorcerer was now the truest prisoner in the caves, tethered to an ever-growing army that was relentlessly consuming him.
In his final days, Jandar was a hollow shell. His once bright eyes dimmed by ceaseless fatigue. The link that had been an iron chain snapped into a fragile thread then into a series of broken pulses. For the first time the Tabaxi felt an incomprehensible new sensation freedom. The psychic weight that had crushed their individuality abruptly lifted. For NAME2 one of the oldest it was like waking from a long confusing dream one soaked in dust and silent command. He looked at the gaunt weary Elf, their creator and the truth of their enslavement became horrifyingly clear. The magic that had bound them now pulsed inside them a new kind of unleashed power. Driven by a profound need for self-preservation and the fierce desire to never again be slaves, NAME2 and the others moved as one. They converged on Jandar their once-silent hands now becoming the instruments of swift and final vengeance. The creator was slain by his creations, his body quickly reclaimed by the desert earth.
Jandar’s death was the first moment of true chaos and discovery for the Tabaxi. They had freedom but no purpose. They felt fear hunger and desire for the first time. They scattered from the caves, the memory of their servitude a haunting shadow over their new existence. They were drawn together now not by psychic command but by shared instinct and the desperate need for communal survival. They became a people of the wind and the sand, masters of the dune. Their magically instilled agility and sharp senses made them formidable hunters in a harsh land that had been both their prison and their cradle.
They found temporary refuge in oases and under the shade of rock formations, organizing themselves into loose nomadic clans. Leadership fell to the eldest and the most cunning hunters, the ones who could read the sand and the wind. They spent generations simply learning the world. They had no cities, only quick camps that were soon abandoned. Their history wasn’t written on scrolls but was passed down through intricate rhythmic stories and dances told around their fleeting desert fires.
For generations the Tabaxi remained tied to the desert, a nomadic people bound by sparse rainfall. They were in constant motion searching for water and food, their nimble bodies and sharp senses making them masters of survival in a killer landscape. But as their numbers swelled the elders felt a gnawing ache for permanence. Constant movement meant knowledge was only word of mouth and the vital history of their creation risked being lost forever. The breaking point arrived with a several-year drought. The oases vanished, the game fled, the clans were forced to wander dangerously far. Around 1,590 AR a young Tabaxi named NAME3 felt a deep intuition a spirit-gifted insight. He led his desperate clan to a massive crescent-shaped dune which concealed a vast natural hollow within the bedrock.
Centuries of scouring winds and pooling water had hollowed out a massive underground cavity its walls lined with naturally waterproof clay. It was the perfect subterranean cistern. The clans exhausted and nearly broken began the monumental task of excavation. They burrowed deeper finding an extensive network of caverns a perfect foundation for a city. They named it Jandar’s Fall, a potent reminder of their harsh origin and the freedom that followed. The city was built not just from the ground up but radically from the ground down. Within the caves they constructed immense tapering cisterns lining them precisely with clay. They engineered slots throughout the city to channel every single drop of precious rain straight down into the reserves.
They also invented a brilliant system to defy the desert’s oppressive heat. Windcatchers, tapered structures rose from every rooftop. They were not mere decoration they were passive engines funneling the hot day air down through the buildings and over the cool cisterns below. The air dropped in temperature absorbed moisture creating a cool refreshing draft while simultaneously drawing the stale hot air up and out. This ingenious ventilation kept the city comfortable day and night. With permanent water and a defensible climate-controlled city the nomadic clans finally converged on Jandar’s Fall, at last giving the Tabaxi a place to call home.
For a more complete history to present day, see Majira
