The Grand OC! [CONTEST XXX: HALLOWEEEEEEEEEEN]

Username: Back in Schaction
Name: Kissed-the-Empress-Levantine, but that's more of a title. He'll answer to Luter just fine.
Gender: Dude, c'mon
Race: Stiggan Marche
Color: Yellow-bellied cur

Description: A healthy adult specimen of his kind, Luter is a big, personable lunk about six feet at the shoulder when balancing on his tail and maybe four and a half when quadrupedal. Stiggan Marche are built like a cross between passerines and sloths, with a bulletlike feathered body and long forearms which sport a single hooked claw. The entire body is covered in soft feathers, a sunny cream on the bottom and throat, dun on the top. The feathers normally sit flat, but you know a Stiggan's on the prowl when they've puffed themselves up, because it helps muffle their movements. The feathers also mask more little curved hooks on their body, which serve a more important use socially than defensively.

The main defensive action for a Stiggan Marche is to flee, and that's often best done with their long tails, which smack against the ground and let the miscreant beast ricochet off to safety. A combination of hooked claws, the springing tail, and enough fluff and cloth to buffer rougher impacts makes them very mobile through built-up areas. Before being given sapience by Wootz and integrating with existing Seakin society (rather than trying to scavenge off it), they would communicate across distances by smacking stuff with their tails.

The beak is distinctly insectivorous, a thin little affair which is actually Luter's most delicate manipulator. His face in general is not very expressive, but there's something about Stiggan Marche stares that makes you think you put your shirt on backwards this morning, and they'll be off to have a good laugh about you as soon as you're out of earshot. Most emotion is conveyed through body language, and most emotion conveyed is merriment. Stiggan Marche as a whole are pretty high on life.

Biography: The Stiggan Marche were like the dozen-odd other generic uplifted beasts contemplating their new-found intelligence, until the incident with LamPrey. The gambler-god found all these squishy glorified livestock to be exceptionally dull, until one of them (A-Coward-Mutt-Pickpocketed-Me) took advantage of his brother distracting the god to steal some choice artifacts out of LamPrey's robes (and slicing away a swatch of fabric for good measure).

LamPrey was equal parts incensed and impressed, and pulled some bullshit god magic that meant that cursed the Stiggan Marche to be the world's best secret-keepers, but we'll get back to that later. LamPrey let the cunning thief keep its trophies, and thus began a culture of cloth and thievery.

A Stiggan Marche is not considered an adult until having completed two rites: One, he steals his own materials to weave cloth (though stealing something to be bartered for materials is generally fine), and weaves a swatch with a pattern he's never seen on his peers' persons. A Stiggan Marche's esteem in society is a factor of his age and the scarcity of his pattern on others, as it's custom to try stealing the cloth of those you cross paths with. They'll either sew swatches into streamers or patchwork sheets, festooning themselves with them from the hooks on their back. Two, he gains a secret worthy of taking as his title, the only circumvention to LamPrey's curse.

You can trace a fellow Stiggan's familial and social ties by where he wears his swatches. One who fringes his own pattern with the swatches of others thinks too highly of himself; swatches worn closer to the body (and thus proving harder to steal) represent individuals where the owner feels a special connection. Luter's garb is predominantly his own pattern, showing he's happy to put himself and his reputation out there. There's a couple dangly bits of strangers he sliced corners off of who he's never going to run into again; the standard style amongst Empire-dwellers. They're tolerated in Mon Sango because someone advised the Empress that having oversight of thieves for hire was a solid decision for a burgeoning metropolis, though Luter would be facing a very messy termination of his employment if he hadn't gotten kidnapped for a battle.

Weapons/Abilities: As well as stealth, jumping really high, an eye for unguarded valuables, and sewing, the Stiggan Marche have one fun feature courtesy of LamPrey: When entrusted with a secret (as in, explicitly told "this is a secret between you and I"), they can't spill it through any means willing or unwilling. Their lack of expression makes it difficult to tell when they're lying as well, which makes interrogation almost impossible. The only exception to this rule is a Stiggan Marche's title: They take the best secret they can, and while they can still never divulge details of who gave it to them, the title doesn't stick unless the confession was true.

Luter, having recently gotten inducted into Stiggan adulthood with many high-fives, just by listening to the right panicked seakin on the right rooftop, earned himself the employment-prospects equivalent of a giant sexy tattoo across his forehead. We're sure the Empress would love to test the strength of LamPrey's magic and see if Luter could spill the beans, if only he weren't a couple universes away by now.

Also in the innumerable pockets of Luter's patchwork garb are food items, trinkets, weapons designed for opposable thumbs, some spools of thread in his swatch colors, a purse full of actual valuables (mostly small gems), and a bunch of pointless trinkets that serve a similar trophy-esque purpose when stealing from non-Stiggan victims.