"Speaking of animal-related things," Calliope said, "what about the catkin race? When we were talking about it you said there were some really good ones. Give us some examples?"
"Sure," Levi said, leaning back and tapping his lips in thought. "So, you've got your basic ones. Tigrans are very strong, very tough, and pretty fast. They've got nasty claws that give the Unarmed Combat and Powerful Strike skills. Cheetarans start with a high Dodge and can use bursts of superspeed for escape, tactical positioning, and damage enhancement. Those are pretty much opposite ends of the spectrum, and there's a bunch of other subspecies that fit somewhere in the middle—lynxans, leopardans, and so on. Then you get into the really wild options."
"Yeah?" Calliope said, leaning forward with rapt attention. She was so invested that she had stopped working her way through the plate of miniature cannoli.
"Yeah," Levi said. "See, the various subspecies fall into two categories: there's the group where they take a real cat and give it stats and skills suggestive of that animal. Tigers are big and strong, cheetahs are fast, lions have a powerful roar that functions as a sonic attack, and so on.
"Then there's the ones where they build off a mythological cat." He sipped his tea, thinking. "There's a subspecies based off the legend of Cat Sith. It eats the souls of enemies it kills, powering itself up in the process. I haven't actually seen it, only heard about it from other guides, so I'm not sure what its base stats are, or how it works mechanically. Might be simply stat boosts, might be some of the abilities of the downed foe, might be something else.
"There's a displacer catkin subspecies. They're permanently invisible, with an illusionary image of themselves that's always about a meter from where they actually are. The image shifts around sometimes, changing where it is relative to them.
"The wampus catkin has psychic attacks, the killakee can turn intangible for short periods, the kamadan has six poison snakes growing out of her torso, and the lammasu is required to worship a deity and can therefore cast spells from that deity's domain." He raised his lower left arm, one claw extended, while simultaneously sipping his tea. "Worshipping a god is a real crapshoot and I strongly advise against it. I was relieved to see that none of you ended up with a cleric or paladin class that would have required you to pick a god. Gods are generally more trouble then they're worth and I advise staying faaaar away from them if you can."
He smiled. "And then there's the hellcatkin."
Calliope leaned farther forward, her eyes shining and one foot tapping furiously with impatience.
"Now, I've only seen this once in all the time I've been in the dungeon," Levi cautioned. "So you really shouldn't get your hopes up. Even if Drew's luck aura is in place—which it probably isn't—then it's still extremely unlikely you would get this subspecies." He paused, looking uncertain, then shook his head. "In fact, you know what? Never mind, I shouldn't even have mentioned it. Just forget I said anything. Catkin is a solid racial choice with good options, but if it were me I would lean towards—"
"Come on!" Calliope burst out. "You gotta tell me!"
"It's not a good idea, okay?" Levi said. "You'll just get your hopes up, which means you won't consider other options and you'll take the race because you're sure you'll get hellcatkin and then you'll be disappointed when you don't. Really, I shouldn't have said anything."
"Stop teasing her," Taylor said, amused. "I know it's fun, but her head might explode. I promise I'll make her give the other races a serious look."
Levi snorted. "Way to ruin my fun, man. Fine. Seriously though, this thing is extremely rare. Not 'literally seen it once ever' rare, but only a clawful of times.
"The dungeon monster called a 'hellcat' is built from a conflation of various mythological entities. It's pitch black, very big, very strong, permanently on fire, vomits lava, inflicts a wasting debuff on anyone who touches its tail, and so on. A hellcatkin is a scaled down version of that, based on the premise that the spirit of a dead human banged a hellcat and the progency was kicked out of the underworld. They keep the 'pitch black and on fire' part, they have claws as long as mine"—he wiggled the banana-length weapons that extended from his fingers—"except much sharper. They generally don't get all of the powers of their progenitors, but they do get a subset of them. That means some combination of turning intangible, vomiting lava, literally ripping your soul out through your nose, and so on. It's like getting a Celestial box at race selection. Let me emphasize that you should not expect to get it—in fact, let's reverse that: you should expect to not get it."
Calliope's eyes were shining. "That is zoomy to the core," she breathed.
"Calliope," Taylor said, his voice filled with warning. "Get those stars out of your eyes. Catkin is a mystery box. Sure, maybe you roll a natural twenty fifty times in a row and get that monster thing, but it sounds like you're much more likely to just be fairly strong and fast. Compare that to satori, where you can literally kill people by thinking about it, or cygnan, where you can fly. Oh, or doppleganger—you'd be very tough right from the start and if we get you a backpack and some metal you could hit like a truck and transform into things and laugh in the fact of anyone who hits you, and and and..."
She bobbed her head. "Yeah, okay. Still, Unc, you gotta admit—even leaving the last one aside, some of those catkin options sound amazing."
"Sure," Levi said. "But most of them either don't have a Constitution bonus or they have an actual penalty. The dungeon's conception of cats is that they're generally fast but fragile. There's a few exceptions, like the tigrans and panthrons, but if you go catkin then it's probably going to be risky to keep being a frontline fighter."
She frowned and deflated. "That's pop," she grumbled. "Still...they're fast, right?"
"Yes," Levi admitted. "Most of them. Most of them get a Dex bonus and a lot of them get a Dodge skill."
"Then let's keep it on the list," she said.
